Boy … uh, I mean Non-Gender-Specific Person, it must be tough being a committed vegan these days. There you are, convinced you’re doing The Right Thing, only to discover that you’re doing The Right Thing for the wrong reasons … so wrong, in fact, that you’re reproducing existing patterns of discrimination and inequality.
I only became aware of this vegan dilemma thanks to scholars working in the rigorous intellectual discipline known as gender studies. Here’s the abstract from a paper published in the Journal of Feminist Media Studies.
This article explores the way vegan and vegetarian diets have been articulated within neo-liberal post-feminist culture. While these diets have an important role for vegetarian eco-feminists, as signs of resistance against the patriarchal and capitalist exploitative system, in post-feminism they have become sexy and business oriented.
This shift is analyzed through the case study of Beyoncé’s involvement with the commercial enterprise “22 days,” a dietary regime that involves the elimination of any animal product for 22 days. Our argument is that while eco-feminists have embraced vegetarian and vegan regimes as ethical and political choices, post-feminism depoliticizes and deradicalizes them. In this way, they become part of an individualistic project that emphasizes empowerment and meritocracy; choice, agency, and responsibilization; and the focus on a healthy, sexy body.
Ultimately, the post-feminist articulation of vegan diets promotes a form of “commodity veg*ism,” that is not only devoid of any critical force, but also reproduces existing patterns of discrimination and inequality. We use the term veg*ism to indicate the fluid uptake of vegan and vegetarian diets, whereby the avoidance of animal products relies more on an individual than on ethical and/or political choice.
It was a real letdown to realize I’ve been wasting my life reading books on health, nutrition, history and economics when I could have been learning about responsibilization.
Before we return to the abstract, I need go on a brief rant about these mushy-science academics and the kind of intellectual and verbal drivel they produce -– much of which is supported by your tax dollars through the university system.
I follow @RealPeerReview on Twitter. Whoever he or she is (if he and she aren’t offensive labels), he or she has access to a gazillion academic papers and regularly posts abstracts to demonstrate what passes for scholarship in today’s universities. The most amusing examples are produced by (ahem) “scholars ” in sort-of-science departments like gender studies.
After laughing my way through several academic-gobbledygook abstracts in a row one day, I saw a connection to Dr. Who. Hang on, I’ll explain.
Dr. Who has been around for several decades. The writers have slowly created an entire alternate reality. Sara became a fan a couple of years ago and watched episode after episode online. She could go on and on about the Dr. Who universe, its history, its characters, and all its rules.
In fact (as she informed me), there are entire books written about the Dr. Who universe and all its rules. Those rules are internally consistent and, in the Dr. Who universe, they make perfect sense. Fanatical fans can cite those rules. They can name the inhabitants, the organizations, the terms, the powers characters do and don’t have, etc., etc. Fans can even engage in debates over what would happen in this-or-that situation. To someone immersed in the Dr. Who universe, those debates might even sound logical.
But of course, the Dr. Who universe, despite all its richness, complexity, and internal logic, is fiction. It’s all been made up.
Same goes for the universe produced in the imaginations of gender-studies scholars. It’s a rich and complex universe with lots of terms and rules, but it’s all been made up. It’s fiction. Let’s call it the Dr. Hooey universe. The main difference is that when fans of Dr. Who write about the Dr. Who universe, they don’t usually come across like morons attempting to sound intelligent.
Here’s part of another abstract tweeted by @RealPeerReview:
As a non-Western woman I found that without an epistemic disobedience to colonial aspects of knowledge I cannot speak in the academic area where Eurocentric and masculine approaches dominiate in producing knowledge. Taking an arts-based and bricolage approach, I have expressed an epistemic disobedience to this hegemony through performative uses of images, story telling, archetypes, “fictocriticism,” and performative writing.
Your tax dollars at work.
I believe in some long-ago post, I mentioned an excellent book on writing titled Telling Writing, by Ken Macrorie. He has a term for that desperate-to-sound-intelligent style of writing that’s basically big-word gobbledygook: Engfish. Universities produce reams of the stuff.
I’ve also mentioned Eric Hoffer, author of the fabulous little book The True Believer. Hoffer wrote in the 1950s, but his insights about people are (unfortunately) still relevant today. Here are some quotes from his book Reflections on the Human Condition:
Where thought is prompted by a penchant for weightiness and a high purpose, the result is often a blend of pompousness and hysteria.
An empty head isn’t really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish.
And that’s what we get with these supposed scholars: pompous, hysterical rubbish written in Engfish.
If we were merely talking about tortured sentences no sane person would want to decipher, that would be bad enough. But even when the language is somewhat comprehensible, it’s clear that intellectual rigor not only isn’t a requirement in these goofy academic circles, it may actually be discouraged.
We’re talking about women (I’m assuming women isn’t an oppressive word — it’s difficult to tell with this crowd) who choose to major in oh-so-practical fields like feminist studies, then write papers explaining that the evil patriarchy is the reason not enough women major in math and science … instead of, say, feminist studies.
After finishing their courses in feminist studies, they write more papers explaining that when males and females behave differently (assuming they don’t consider the labels male and female to be oppressively cisnormative), it’s solely because of socialization imposed by the evil patriarchy. For an eco-feminist vegan to believe such nonsense, she merely has to love animals so much that she never actually spends any time with them and therefore knows almost nothing about them.
We’ve raised a lot of chickens over the years. Every rooster we’ve owned (I’m assuming owned is an oppressive word) attacked me at least once if not several times. Little bird, a fraction of my size, attempting to kick my ass. Why? Because they’re roosters, and that’s what roosters do. Get too close to the flock, and they’ll beat your legs with their wings or try to spike you with their spurs.
I’ve never had a hen attack me, other than make a half-hearted poke at my hand when I was reaching in to collect eggs. (I’m assuming collecting eggs was an exploitative act on my part.) Roosters act like roosters and hens act like hens because that’s how Nature coded them. Socialization or the chicken patriarchy or toxic rooster masculinity or whatever have diddly to do with it.
In his breakout book 12 Rules for Life, psychologist Jordan Peterson spends nearly an entire chapter describing the battle for dominance among male lobsters. Dr. Peterson isn’t trying to make your next visit to Red Lobster more illuminating. He’s making the point that lobsters are one of the oldest species on the planet, and we see the battle for dominance play out among males in nearly every species that came along after lobsters … lions, deer, monkeys, humans, you name it. If you want to avoid being a pushover, you’d best be aware that a drive for dominance is woven into the fabric of the world. Stand up straight with your shoulders back, as Dr. Peterson advises, so the dominance-seekers don’t make you a target. (He is of course talking about an attitude, not just a physical posture.)
Males act like males because they have male hormones, not because Daddy Lobster socialized Junior Lobster into a pattern of toxic masculinity. In fact, as several scientists have demonstrated in animal studies, you can inject a female or a passive male with testosterone and BINGO! — you get a much more active, aggressive animal as a result. Some female animals injected with testosterone will even pursue and try to mate with other females — without asking permission first. Or you can block testosterone production in a male and end up with a far less aggressive critter as a result.
Even a writer for The New York Times understands how strongly hormones affect behavior:
Testosterone is clearly correlated in both men and women with psychological dominance, confident physicality and high self-esteem. In most combative, competitive environments, especially physical ones, the person with the most T wins. Put any two men in a room together and the one with more testosterone will tend to dominate the interaction. Working women have higher levels of testosterone than women who stay at home, and the daughters of working women have higher levels of testosterone than the daughters of housewives. A 1996 study found that in lesbian couples in which one partner assumes the male, or ”butch,” role and another assumes the female, or ”femme,” role, the ”butch” woman has higher levels of testosterone than the ”femme” woman.
Anyway, to sum up the rant: to be taken in by the multisyllabic blathering (or what I sometimes refer to as verbal vomit) found in papers produced by “eco-feminist” or other gender-studies scholars, you have to live in the Dr. Hooey universe, not the real one. You have to pretend hormones don’t affect behavior — or, as some feminist scholars have advocated, you simply declare actual sciences like biology to be part of the patriarchy so you can ignore them.
So now that I’ve expressed my opinion of the rigorous scholarship typical of the field, let’s return to the paper and its Engfish explanation of why some vegans just aren’t doing it right. Or for the right reasons. Or something.
While these diets have an important role for vegetarian eco-feminists, as signs of resistance against the patriarchal and capitalist exploitative system, in post-feminism they have become sexy and business oriented.
Well, at least now when I hear people talk about being part of “the resistance,” I’ll know what they’re resisting: the patriarchal and capitalist exploitative system. This is, of course, in stark contrast to communist and socialist systems, where other people are allowed to live off the fruits of your labor, yet you are somehow not exploited in the process.
As for all that brave resisting going on … I dunno, when I think of resistance fighters, I tend to picture people who actually put themselves in danger while blowing up bridges and such to interrupt Nazi troop and supply movements. Seems to me engaging in “resistance” by eating soybeans instead of burgers is pretty wimpy. (I assume wimpy is an oppressive word.)
Our argument is that while eco-feminists have embraced vegetarian and vegan regimes as ethical and political choices, post-feminism depoliticizes and deradicalizes them. In this way, they become part of an individualistic project that emphasizes empowerment and meritocracy; choice, agency, and responsibilization; and the focus on a healthy, sexy body.
Ahh, now we get to the meat of the problem. (I assume meat is an offensive and oppressive word, but don’t care.) If you embrace a vegan regime as a political statement, you’re doing it for the right reasons. (I assume a vegan regime, as opposed to a vegan regimen, is what you get when a dictator’s idiotic economic policies finally cause a permanent shortage of all animal foods. North Korea may be a vegan regime by now.)
But if you go vegan for your own empowerment — especially as part of a quest for a healthy, sexy body — you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.
Well, I have to say, that certainly pokes holes in the arguments made by a lot of vegetrollians. (I assume pokes is an offensive word to eco-feminists, but don’t care.) Back when vegan zealots were constantly showing here up in the comments, they kept telling me if I give up meat, I’ll live longer. Or get skinny and sexy like them. In fact, one of the best-selling vegan books is titled Skinny Bitch and promises women that going vegan will make them radiantly healthy, thin and beautiful.
Next time a vegan tries that argument on me, I’ll just quote this next paragraph from the paper:
Ultimately, the post-feminist articulation of vegan diets promotes a form of “commodity veg*ism,” that is not only devoid of any critical force, but also reproduces existing patterns of discrimination and inequality.
Look here, you vegan zealot, by promising me I’ll get healthy and skinny, you are promoting commodity veganism devoid of any critical force! And worse, you’re asking me to reproduce existing patterns of discrimination and inequality by adopting a diet to make myself more attractive than the other boys. Isn’t the world unfair enough already?!
I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t handle the guilt. So I’ll avoid the whole internal conflict and continue eating meat. I hope the eco-feminists understand … not that I can understand anything they write in their papers.
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Speaking of Nazi resistance fighters: Tennessee’s Nazi-Defying Hero Soldier Nominated For Congressional Gold Medal
Wow. That’s a hero.
Wow and thank you! What a load of gibberish. I don’t even know what words they meant to use. It’s like they took a class in how to use a thesaurus and how to make up new scientific sounding words and jammed them together. One of my favorite books is Anne of Green Gables and she makes a statement in there that she has to use big words for big ideas. Eventually her character gets over it.
Thank you for the late night laugh. I enjoyed it.
Yup, when people load their sentences with big words, it’s usually because they don’t have clear thoughts to share. Good writers communicate ideas in clear, simple language — even complicated ideas.
Academics can even muck that up, Tom. When I was getting my doctorate, I spent a lot of time around academics. I was at the U to become a clinician and had no desire to go the academic route (well, outside of the summers off and sabbaticals). One word that was bandied about, particularly in regard to discussions about race, was “conversation.” I don’t know where it began, but if you threw a rock down a hallway at the U, you’d probably hit someone talking about having a “conversation,” always stated with great gravity, They managed to take an ordinary, functional word and turn it into something entirely other – it became precious, and very much tied to a meaningful, important dialogue between really smart, open-minded people, rather than, well, a conversation. What’s sad is that there were people using knowledge and power to make positive changes via the U and grants, but these positive aspects of education and knowledge are often overwhelmed by dilettantes who are at the U not to make the world a better place, but to show everyone just how smart they are.
As Vox Day pointed out in “Social Justice Warriors Always Lie,” when these goofs acquire a critical mass in any organization, they always steer the organization away from its original purpose (educating kids, for example).
Of course, I’ve never considered academics to be shining examples of clear writing. They write Engfish to impress other academics.
That’s academia-speak. It’s kind of fun to use but it gets tedious when you have to use it a lot.
As plumbers use their own language, as doctors use Latin instead of English, so academics use academy-speak, though every discipline has its own vocabulary.
“she has to use big words for big ideas.”
I know a few media pundits who do that.
I like the title of verbicidal maniacs for these special kind of idiots.
LOL!
You would probably enjoy the post-modern academic paper generator site:
http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
Every time you reload it, you get fresh fashionable academic twaddle!
Ohmygod, that’s awesome … although a couple of times, it generated sentences that almost made sense. They may need to tweak it a bit more to be as truly incomprehensible as papers written by gender-studies scholars.
Speaking of Nazi resistance fighters: Tennessee’s Nazi-Defying Hero Soldier Nominated For Congressional Gold Medal
Wow. That’s a hero.
Wow and thank you! What a load of gibberish. I don’t even know what words they meant to use. It’s like they took a class in how to use a thesaurus and how to make up new scientific sounding words and jammed them together. One of my favorite books is Anne of Green Gables and she makes a statement in there that she has to use big words for big ideas. Eventually her character gets over it.
Thank you for the late night laugh. I enjoyed it.
Yup, when people load their sentences with big words, it’s usually because they don’t have clear thoughts to share. Good writers communicate ideas in clear, simple language — even complicated ideas.
Academics can even muck that up, Tom. When I was getting my doctorate, I spent a lot of time around academics. I was at the U to become a clinician and had no desire to go the academic route (well, outside of the summers off and sabbaticals). One word that was bandied about, particularly in regard to discussions about race, was “conversation.” I don’t know where it began, but if you threw a rock down a hallway at the U, you’d probably hit someone talking about having a “conversation,” always stated with great gravity, They managed to take an ordinary, functional word and turn it into something entirely other – it became precious, and very much tied to a meaningful, important dialogue between really smart, open-minded people, rather than, well, a conversation. What’s sad is that there were people using knowledge and power to make positive changes via the U and grants, but these positive aspects of education and knowledge are often overwhelmed by dilettantes who are at the U not to make the world a better place, but to show everyone just how smart they are.
As Vox Day pointed out in “Social Justice Warriors Always Lie,” when these goofs acquire a critical mass in any organization, they always steer the organization away from its original purpose (educating kids, for example).
Of course, I’ve never considered academics to be shining examples of clear writing. They write Engfish to impress other academics.
You taint our beloved Doctor Who by even associating him proximity-wise with these harpie-insane low-T monsters!
My bad. But Dr. Who fans know his universe isn’t real.
OMG OMG OMG!!!
I’m BEYOND delighted to find you’ve read Vox Day! Both his books “SJWs Always Lie” and “SJWs Always Double Down” are brilliant and very helpful! Waiting hopefully — and a bit breathlessly! — for the third: “SJWs Always Project.” Vox Day offers a (free) ’emergency response PDF’ on his blog, for folks who have not yet read the books and find themselves the target of an SJW swarming attack:
http://www.milobookclub.com/mart/SJW_Attack_Survival_Guide.pdf
He’s also the co-author of “Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America” with John Red Eagle; and has written a bunch of EXCELLENT sci fi books. He has also recently started a couple of comic ‘houses’ (? lines? I don’t know what they’re called) — Arkhaven, which is publishing (among others) Alt*Hero, Avalon (by famous comic writer Chuck Dixon), and the “RIGHT HO, JEEVES” series of comics (also being done by Dixon with illustrator Gary Kwapisz).
If you’d learn more about Alt*Hero: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2017/10/althero-press-release.html, or see actual pages and characters and read the synopsis of ‘who-what-where’ here: https://freestartr.com/project/althero/ (Note that the “FreeStartr” ( like a ‘K-Kstrtr’ but WITHOUT the leftie censorship!) campaign was set for $25k and finally closed at $235,900!)
Or “look inside” “Right HO Jeeves” (yes, it IS actually Wodehouse!): https://www.amazon.com/Right-Ho-Jeeves-Binge-Brinkley-ebook/dp/B078YFJQJW
Or first out from his Dark Legion Comics: “Rebel Dead Revenge #1: Stonewall’s Arm” https://www.amazon.com/Rebel-Dead-Revenge-Stonewalls-Arm-ebook/dp/B079KFSV5Y
Sorry to rave on Tom — but these things: some already published, some yet-to-come out, are just SO excellent!
I’ve only read “SJW’s Always Lie,” but others are on my to-read list. It was someone here in comments — perhaps you — who recommended it in the first place.
“Cuckservative” literally snapped me around 180 degrees on the immigration issue and turned me into a build-the-damned-wall libertarian. He quotes one of the (these days) lesser known figures from the Bible named “Jesus” something or other.
Cheers
That’s academia-speak. It’s kind of fun to use but it gets tedious when you have to use it a lot.
As plumbers use their own language, as doctors use Latin instead of English, so academics use academy-speak, though every discipline has its own vocabulary.
“she has to use big words for big ideas.”
I know a few media pundits who do that.
I like the title of verbicidal maniacs for these special kind of idiots.
LOL!
You would probably enjoy the post-modern academic paper generator site:
http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
Every time you reload it, you get fresh fashionable academic twaddle!
Ohmygod, that’s awesome … although a couple of times, it generated sentences that almost made sense. They may need to tweak it a bit more to be as truly incomprehensible as papers written by gender-studies scholars.
Reason.com did a “Hit and Run” post a couple of years ago about a University of Oregon study titled “Glaciers, Gender, and Science—A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental climate change,” highlighting this portion of the abstract:
“Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions. ”
The study was funded by the National Science Foundation. Your tax dollars at work.
(The entire abstract is here: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0309132515623368)
Good grief. Talk about verbal vomit. All those words, yet nothing was communicated.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that was an Onion article. Sheesh.
“…I need go on a brief rant about these mushy-science academics …”
I think that should read
“…I need go on a brief rant about these mushy academics…”
The text you cited showed absolutely no scientific influence at all.
Agreed, and yet these goofballs consider it a social science.
You know who else was a vegetarian and had a regime?
Heh-heh … yeah, I think of him when vegetrollians insist eating meat makes people violent.
If you’re referring to Hitler he was not a vegetarian.
Depends on whose account you read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler_and_vegetarianism
“…cisnormative…” Ha ha. I see what you did there.
“Where thought is prompted by a penchant for weightiness and a high purpose, the result is often a blend of pompousness and hysteria”. That made me think immediately of absolutely everything I’ve ever read by Dr David Katz. Coincidence?
But his writing has been compared to the works of Chaucer and Milton!
Oh, wait … that was him reviewing his own work under a fake name.
And then there’s this!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5662431/A-premature-deaths-avoided-cut-meat-Harvard-study-finds.html
‘We have just been doing some calculations looking at the question of how much could we reduce mortality shifting towards a healthy, more plant based diet, not necessarily totally vegan, and our estimates are about one third of deaths could be prevented,’ Dr Willett told a room of delegates.
The researchers hypothesized that rather than going by the popular paleo trend, people should follow a simian diet similar to that of gorillas.
To test that idea they teamed up with The Bronx Zoo and studied eating habits of gorillas before recreating it for humans.
The result was 63 recommended servings of fruits and vegetables per day, which caused cholesterol to fall by 35 percent in just two weeks.
‘That was quite dramatic,’ lead researcher Dr David Jenkins told the Telegraph.
(No, this is not from the Onion.)
Good to see Walter Willett shedding whatever credibility he still had.
So you’re saying you don’t want to eat like a gorilla?
Not unless I wake up someday and find I’ve developed a gorilla’s teeth, jaws and digestive system.
THat’s TERRIFYING! Please! Don’t even JOKE about that!
Someone called him Walt Wallet, a name I immediately adopted.
Recently I read a paper by someone who claimed that it was our duty as humans to alleviate suffering and harm among wild animals. Yes of course we should encourage predators to stave to death to “save” their prey. He even claimed we should genetically engineer lions and tigers to become able to survive on a vegan diet.
No it wan’t in the Onion, honest.
I wonder what they would think of Jess Pryles
http://jesspryles.com/
They probably wouldn’t have a high opinion.
But what about the poor planet when our population explodes because 1/3 of humans won’t ever die? And what do the other 2/3 die from?
I’m guessing suicide.
Cheers
Vegan Neck may be a candidate
Reason.com did a “Hit and Run” post a couple of years ago about a University of Oregon study titled “Glaciers, Gender, and Science—A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental climate change,” highlighting this portion of the abstract:
“Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions. ”
The study was funded by the National Science Foundation. Your tax dollars at work.
(The entire abstract is here: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0309132515623368)
Good grief. Talk about verbal vomit. All those words, yet nothing was communicated.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that was an Onion article. Sheesh.
Almost as funny, to be sure. The Onion did have a funny headline some months ago, something along the lines of Trump supporter changes mind after reading 800 pages of Queer Theory.
“…I need go on a brief rant about these mushy-science academics …”
I think that should read
“…I need go on a brief rant about these mushy academics…”
The text you cited showed absolutely no scientific influence at all.
Agreed, and yet these goofballs consider it a social science.
You know who else was a vegetarian and had a regime?
Heh-heh … yeah, I think of him when vegetrollians insist eating meat makes people violent.
If you’re referring to Hitler he was not a vegetarian.
Depends on whose account you read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler_and_vegetarianism
“…cisnormative…” Ha ha. I see what you did there.
“Where thought is prompted by a penchant for weightiness and a high purpose, the result is often a blend of pompousness and hysteria”. That made me think immediately of absolutely everything I’ve ever read by Dr David Katz. Coincidence?
But his writing has been compared to the works of Chaucer and Milton!
Oh, wait … that was him reviewing his own work under a fake name.
And then there’s this!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5662431/A-premature-deaths-avoided-cut-meat-Harvard-study-finds.html
‘We have just been doing some calculations looking at the question of how much could we reduce mortality shifting towards a healthy, more plant based diet, not necessarily totally vegan, and our estimates are about one third of deaths could be prevented,’ Dr Willett told a room of delegates.
The researchers hypothesized that rather than going by the popular paleo trend, people should follow a simian diet similar to that of gorillas.
To test that idea they teamed up with The Bronx Zoo and studied eating habits of gorillas before recreating it for humans.
The result was 63 recommended servings of fruits and vegetables per day, which caused cholesterol to fall by 35 percent in just two weeks.
‘That was quite dramatic,’ lead researcher Dr David Jenkins told the Telegraph.
(No, this is not from the Onion.)
Good to see Walter Willett shedding whatever credibility he still had.
So you’re saying you don’t want to eat like a gorilla?
Not unless I wake up someday and find I’ve developed a gorilla’s teeth, jaws and digestive system.
THat’s TERRIFYING! Please! Don’t even JOKE about that!
Yes, you can’t have a gorilla’s complete digestive system and a human’s brain. Our ancestors gave up our large intestine and its function to fuel our large brains.
Perhaps that’s the cause of Dr. Willet’s problem? That he has large intestines for brains?! (This lacks some of the punch of the elementary school taunt, which I would not think about applying to the eminent doctor.)
Heck no, that would be disrespectful.
But it would explain his cognitive style.
Posting here gets me free lessons in snark attacks.
Someone called him Walt Wallet, a name I immediately adopted.
Recently I read a paper by someone who claimed that it was our duty as humans to alleviate suffering and harm among wild animals. Yes of course we should encourage predators to stave to death to “save” their prey. He even claimed we should genetically engineer lions and tigers to become able to survive on a vegan diet.
No it wan’t in the Onion, honest.
I wonder what they would think of Jess Pryles
http://jesspryles.com/
They probably wouldn’t have a high opinion.
But what about the poor planet when our population explodes because 1/3 of humans won’t ever die? And what do the other 2/3 die from?
I’m guessing suicide.
Cheers
Vegan Neck may be a candidate
“Sometimes I use big words I don’t quite understand to make myself seem more photosynthesis”
Enjoyed the article, Tom!
Okay, that drew a good laugh.
“North Korea may be a vegan regime by now.”
Not for long!
Today I saw how they planted a rock and sat on a bridge.
Korean unification by midsummer! Talk about responsibilization.
Interesting times.
“Sometimes I use big words I don’t quite understand to make myself seem more photosynthesis”
Enjoyed the article, Tom!
Okay, that drew a good laugh.
“North Korea may be a vegan regime by now.”
Not for long!
Today I saw how they planted a rock and sat on a bridge.
Korean unification by midsummer! Talk about responsibilization.
Interesting times.
I get really sick of assertions that we’re living in a post-feminist age! Who decided THAT? 😉
Gender-studies professors, apparently.
I get really sick of assertions that we’re living in a post-feminist age! Who decided THAT? 😉
Gender-studies professors, apparently.
This reminds me of the book Politically Correct Fairy Tales, written in the 1990s, when prose like this was over-the-top ridiculous.
As my comedian pal Tim Slagle and I discovered way back when we were doing political humor together, the problem with these loons is that whenever you make fun of them by exaggerating, reality catches up.
This reminds me of the book Politically Correct Fairy Tales, written in the 1990s, when prose like this was over-the-top ridiculous.
As my comedian pal Tim Slagle and I discovered way back when we were doing political humor together, the problem with these loons is that whenever you make fun of them by exaggerating, reality catches up.
I saw an article in May’s “Reason” magazine about the dietary guidelines. The scientific debates are supposed to be settled in the cockfights in the scientific arena. The problem is the (and I think is my extension based on this article is they are settled instead in cockfights in government committees and scientific conferences, that is the man[1] with the most testosterone wins where the evidence is anywhere close to equal. It is also stated in the article that if the government had not intervened the science boys may have figured it out. I think not, the money ran in the other directions.
Have to run, my internet is closing down.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury the evidence is conclusive’; we are still apes. To paraphrase Soonpy
yesterday we were apes, today we are apes and in all probability tomorrow we will still be apes. Their is so little chance for advancement.
[1] This is a big contributing factor in woman’s contributions remaining unrecognized.
All good points. That’s the problem with centralized decision-making. Let people figure this out by leveraging the wisdom of crowds, and one domineering individual can’t end up setting dietary policy for everyone.
I saw an article in May’s “Reason” magazine about the dietary guidelines. The scientific debates are supposed to be settled in the cockfights in the scientific arena. The problem is the (and I think is my extension based on this article is they are settled instead in cockfights in government committees and scientific conferences, that is the man[1] with the most testosterone wins where the evidence is anywhere close to equal. It is also stated in the article that if the government had not intervened the science boys may have figured it out. I think not, the money ran in the other directions.
Have to run, my internet is closing down.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury the evidence is conclusive’; we are still apes. To paraphrase Soonpy
yesterday we were apes, today we are apes and in all probability tomorrow we will still be apes. Their is so little chance for advancement.
[1] This is a big contributing factor in woman’s contributions remaining unrecognized.
All good points. That’s the problem with centralized decision-making. Let people figure this out by leveraging the wisdom of crowds, and one domineering individual can’t end up setting dietary policy for everyone.
Generally speaking, the more adjectives used to describe something, the less important it is. As in, “neo-liberal post-feminist culture.” Sort of like the Under Assistant Associate Dean of somthingorother. Translation: pencil sharpener. Oh, and that whirring sound you’re hearing is my old writing professor spinning in her grave. That entire paragraph merits an entire case of red pencils.
And the punchline: while doing some online research to prepare the post, I came across websites for university gender-studies departments that promised prospective students they’d learn skills employers value … such as critical thinking and written communications. I nearly spit out my drink. These people don’t think critically and can’t write a clear sentence.
Generally speaking, the more adjectives used to describe something, the less important it is. As in, “neo-liberal post-feminist culture.” Sort of like the Under Assistant Associate Dean of somthingorother. Translation: pencil sharpener. Oh, and that whirring sound you’re hearing is my old writing professor spinning in her grave. That entire paragraph merits an entire case of red pencils.
And the punchline: while doing some online research to prepare the post, I came across websites for university gender-studies departments that promised prospective students they’d learn skills employers value … such as critical thinking and written communications. I nearly spit out my drink. These people don’t think critically and can’t write a clear sentence.
Before we leave this blog post I have to say how the first excerpt wore on me. I felt like I was in quicksand, struggling to breathe. I’m reminded of “If you can’t dazzle ’em with brilliance, baffle ’em with bullshit”. I read virtually every word you write, but I’m glad we’ve moved on to another subject. 🙂
Imagine trying to read the entire paper.
Before we leave this blog post I have to say how the first excerpt wore on me. I felt like I was in quicksand, struggling to breathe. I’m reminded of “If you can’t dazzle ’em with brilliance, baffle ’em with bullshit”. I read virtually every word you write, but I’m glad we’ve moved on to another subject. 🙂
Imagine trying to read the entire paper.