Another selfish, autocratic Republican.

In the words of fake Whoopi Goldberg: I hate Republicans. Republicans are so stupid. I hate Republicans.

IFO hope her house got good and egged.
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I activated Akismet plugin for Wordpress a little while ago. I am generally kind of wary of blacklist-based spam control, but so far it’s been very industrious.

The downside is of course that now I see just how many real comments I don’t get. :)

A Canadian guy who goes online only by the name Angryman has, in the spirit of so many Internet-enhanced amateur research projects since Strawberry Pop Tart Blow Torch, begun a personal experiment to eat nothing but monkey chow for as long as he can stand, and see what happens.

His stated motives are fairly uninspiring: laziness, complacency, basically not wanting to deal with the onerous tasks of selecting food, cooking food, and cleaning up after cooking and eating food. On the other hand, his promise of “less than $1 a meal” seems at once cheapskatey, yet fundamentally economical.

But one redeeming line of thought he makes is this: Do we, in fact, have any biological need to have the extent of food variety that we have? If our closest animal-kingdom cousins are expected to be fully healthy on a steady diet of pellets, why can’t we?

Food, at least for Americans, is very emotional and psychological. For the average American, the question “what do you want to eat” is answered by the tongue and the brain, and influenced by habits and cravings, instead of being answered by the stomach and the body, influenced by actual dietary needs.

Some infant nutrition experts, such as pediatrician Clara Davis in the 1940s, advise parents to let young children pick their own food, because they are reacting purely on physiological responses. If their body has enough vitamin C but needs protein, for example, they will likely go for the peanut butter but maybe not so much for the orange juice.

R told me once that Europeans have a more pragmatic attitude towards food, where food is seen more as an energy source rather than a form of entertainment. Most animals don’t have a widely varied set of food sources; they may have seasonal preferences, but mainly seek out a small set of food options. As an extreme case, the koala eats nothing but a single type of leaf, and barely even any water. One rumor has it that the military tried developing a perfect food sometime in the mid-1900s, trying to approach full nutrition with minimal waste.

All this puts the human or at least Western attitude towards food into question. What is the purpose of food? Have we added an additional purpose that provides no survival value? Is this a positive or negative purpose, i.e. do the emotional/psychological benefits outweigh the physiological and nutritional detriments?

Well, whether or not it is, monkey chow may not be the answer. Angryman’s results by Day 5 are not promising. As it turns out, the manufacturer of his new dietary intake has made it clear that their product is not intended for humans, though it’s anyone’s guess what the distinction is that makes it it is appropriate for a wide variety of other primates.

Welcome to kradeleet, my nascent foray into serious blogging. Expect that it will encompass my interests, which include technology, politics, music, and any combination of the above.

If you’ve wandered here from any of the places I’ve recently submitted the blog to, I’m afraid to admit I’m not entirely settled in yet, but welcome.