Author: Sandy Smith

Vegitarian Nomenclature Nazis

/ Sandy Smith / 2 Comments

So apparently vegetarians don’t eat vegetables. And when you ask “animal, vegetable, or mineral” in Twenty Questions, you’re leaving out most of the stuff vegetarians eat. Or something. Anyway, by referring to vegetables being able to possess saturated fats, I was informed I wasn’t talking about vegetables, I was talking about “legumes.”

Um, OK. So when I asked if legumes were animals, I was criticized for being all “technical.” Right, because I’m just talking about plants being vegetables, but somehow I’m getting all “technical” about it. But no, let’s subclass them and arbitrarily call the “other” category “vegetable.”

“Reality is a Crutch for People Who Can’t Handle Drugs”

/ Sandy Smith / 2 Comments

Veterans of the late, lamented Suck–whom I’ve had the privilege of watching riff in person–Nick Gillespie and Tim Cavanaugh, reunite for a review of various blogs at Jewcy.

Read it–it will make you a better person.

Samples:

Crammed in with all the reporting on fighter drones and hand phasers and plasma UFOs there's this tidbit about a cop so wimpy he panicked and called 911 after feeding his wife some pot brownies. This is exactly the sort of "bad trip" or "bummer" we were warned about by luminaries ranging from Sonny Bono to Bro and Dude; and it's proof, as if we needed any more, that reality is just a crutch for people who can't handle drugs.

But I do owe you for a remarkable piece of advice—"Never pass up an opportunity to have sex on TV with Gore Vidal"—that I look forward to using at some point in the future, preferably after the Rapture has begun. (Are we even allowed to make Rapture jokes at Jewcy? Writing for this site, I haven't felt this Catholic since Mark Foley stopped IM'ing me).

HT: Julian Sanchez

Update: If you can’t suss out the unobtrusive links amongst the cloud of thrice-damned “tags” at the top of the story, today’s installment is in.

900ft Jesus Says Don’t Raise Money, Just Die Already

/ Sandy Smith / 3 Comments

Jerry Falwell has kicked it. A shadow has been lightened across Lynchburg, VA, an otherwise lovely town in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge mountains. But before everybody starts looking for the good in him, it’s worth remembering someone else who previously god threatened to call home, and what became of it.

Roberts said God had told him,

I want you to use the ORU medical school to put My medical presence in the earth. I want you to get this going in one year or I will call you home. It will cost $8 million and I want you to believe you can raise it.

The City of Faith medical clinic was closed later that year. In early 1988, all scholarships to the medical school were cancelled and students were required to repay large sums if they transferred to other schools. In 1989, the medical school was closed altogether.

Edit:…for clarity, I’m referring to Oral Roberts. Here’s the bad stuff Falwell has done to make him deserving of the nonexistent fires of hell: averred that the US deserved 9/11 because we’re sinners, inherited the PTL and looted it, declaimed Tinky Winky as an agent for the homosexual agenda, claimed AIDS was “god’s wrath” on homosexuals, and attempted to repress critics through the courts.

Fallwell had better hope I’m right about hell or the lack thereof.

Yeah, No Donation This Year

/ Sandy Smith / 1 Comment

Read about the spectacular fashion in which a local SPCA lost a supporter. There’s informed consent, and then there’s just plain stupidity.

Putting aside for now the disingenuousness of being told to fill out an application that is sure to be rejected, I tell him that two things bother me. Of course the SPCA doesn’t know the provenance of most of the animals it shelters. That’s a given. To tell families with kids that they can’t adopt a dog whose history is the least bit murky — even a dog that the SPCA itself describes as friendly — is, in my book, a disservice to both the families and the animals. And also, I just don’t take kindly to people making unbidden decisions on my behalf, presuming to tell me what’s best for me, my wife, and my kids. Would he?

Apparently, he would, and threw them out.

Update: The kicker is they’d qualified a couple of years ago to adopt a couple of kids. So they’re good enough to adopt humans, but not animals.

What to Do with a Baby Bird

/ Sandy Smith / 1 Comment

I’ve occasionally gotten questions as to what to do with a baby bird found outside. It turns out that the University of Minnesota has an excellent guide on what to do with a baby bird. The answer people don’t like to hear is, “Nothing.”

Most birds will be fine, even if they’re temporarily away from their parents. Some will be eaten by predators. It’s sad and no fun to watch (especially if you’re a pet bird owner like me), but it is how the predators stay alive and bird populations are kept to healthy levels. Most of the time the bird will be fine on its own.

The biggest myth is that if you handle it, the parents will smell you on them and reject it. Most birds have terrible senses of smell and will happily accept any baby you return to them–once you go away and leave them alone.

These are wild animals and do best when they keep their distance from large predators–and you count as the largest predator they’ll see. So imagine you fall down and a giant lion came by and started sniffing around you. You’d be scared to death, right? Same for a bird, only it would be like Godzilla instead of a lion, given the size difference.

So if you see a baby bird and there’s an obvious nest, pick it up and put it back. If there isn’t one and it has feathers, let it alone. Above all, don’t mess with it unless you’ve been trained, because as the link above points out, lots of things well-intentioned people do actually kill or seriously injure the bird they’re trying to help.

Wild animals are wild–if you want to help, give to an organization that works to rescue or preserve habitats for endangered wildlife. That will do more than anything else you could do.

Chappelle’s Show Sketch Becomes Historical Reenactment

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One (in)famous Chapelle’s Show sketch was about a famous Klansman who, though blind, had written several anti-black books and delivered stirring speeches on record, and only appeared in public with his hood on. The joke? He was black and didn’t know it.

Now comes word that an American fascist leader from the 30s was actually “black.” Though as my girlfriend would point out, this says a lot more about different constructions about who is “white” and “black” than it does about this particular guy.

It should be noted, of course, that not all fascists were necessarily as virulently racist as Hitler’s Nazis or the KKK…but there was probably a lot of crossover, and Dennis was an anti-Semite. Of course, this doesn’t separate him much from aspects of mainstream black American culture. Lots of examples of this kind of oppressed-group-on-oppressed-group hate exist, and there have even been other recent examples of “passing” as the dominant group in order to cast aspersions on the group you don’t want to be associated with.

So, while an interesting tidbit, the tone of “wow look at that crazy racist history” in the Guardian (leaving aside their portrayal of Southern miscegenation laws as “American”) should probably be “look, another example of an established but not much-discussed trend.”

For Once, A World Bank Dam Environmentalists Won’t Hate (Much)

/ Sandy Smith / 3 Comments

Ordinarily, the thought of a World Bank-financed dam sends environmentalists into frothing rage.

However, in Kazakhstan, the Bank is financing dams that are beginning to restore parts of the Aral Sea, which at one point was down to a quarter of its original size.

By the 1990s only a quarter of the Aral Sea was left, but recently using a $68m loan from the World Bank, the Kazakh government built a dam that split the sea into two parts.

[…]

Communities in the area are already feeling the impact. The fishermen are back in their boats, the clouds and the rain have returned and many across this impoverished region say the future no longer looks hopeless.

When you think about the impact of human activities on the environment, remember that the government is often one of the worst causes of environmental devastation. Almost all attempts to turn desert into farmland have been government projects, specifically because no private investor would ever attempt it.