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Monthly Archives: January 2009
Uncle Eddie’s Vegan Cookies Also Recalled
The Salmonella recall stemming from the Peanut Corp. of America continues to widen. Uncle Eddie’s Vegan Cookies has recalled some of it’s Peanut-butter Chocolate Chip cookies which contain peanut butter supplied by Peanut Corporation of America. The recalled cookies include: 12 oz. Bag (UPC 40559 03302) 3.75 oz. individually wrapped (UPC 40559 03305) Recalled date codes include the code for peanut butter, 2 and a Julian date. Example: 21509 is read as the 15th day of 2009. Recalled dates are: 221408 thru and including 21509 (READ AS THE 214TH DAY OF 2008 THRU AND INCLUDING THE 15TH DAY OF 2009.) Full details are available here. Expect more recalled products now that PCA has widened the recall to all peanuts and peanut products processed in its Blakely, Georgia facility since Jan. 1, 2007, after it came to light that they knew at least that far back that the plant was contaminated. You know something is badly wrong with our food supply… Read more
The Beast has once again graced us with an excellent review of the most loathsome people in America – 2008… Read more
What do Tulane, Alabama, Stanford, Harvard, Syracuse and Tulsa have in common? They are the answers to one of the hardest sports related pub trivia questions ever. What the question is I leave as an exercise for the… Read more
Still Living On Cash
A little more than two years ago, I wrote a short post about how we had been living solely on cash; no credit cards, no debt, no silliness. We are still living on cash, and still loving it. As I said in the original post, life is better living on cash. The lack of worries, guilt, unexpected clashes between my spending and my wife’s – that sort of thing gets addictive pretty quickly. So, what have I learned in the two additional years we have been living without credit cards? Not much, and that is probably the biggest lesson. Outside of the one example of a Blockbuster video refusing to rent to me without a credit card on file (are they even still around?), there is nothing different about living without one. We have had no struggles to contend with, no problems with this merchant or that landlord or anything of the sort. From the point of view of what it makes possible or impossible, it has been a complete non-event. Have there been times when I wished I had a credit card? Of… Read more
Clif, Luna Bars Recalled In Peanut Butter Salmonella Scare
On January 19, Clif Bar announced the recall of fourteen US products and 4 Canadian products due to the peanut butter in those products being sourced from the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA). PCA is under investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a recent Salmonella outbreak thought to be caused by tainted peanut butter. Salmonella is actually a group of bacteria that can cause diarrheal illness in humans. They are microscopic living creatures that pass from the feces of people or animals to other people or other animals. There are many different kinds of Salmonella bacteria. Salmonella serotype Typhimurium and Salmonella serotype Enteritidis are the most common in the United States. Most persons infected with Salmonella develop diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps 12 to 72 hours after infection. The illness usually lasts 4 to 7 days, and most persons recover without treatment. However, in some persons, the diarrhea may be so severe that the patient needs to… Read more
An involuntary facebook of the rich and powerful, Little Sis connects the powerful networks of individuals who’ve enjoyed unprecedented influence, wealth, and access while steering our country towards its present crisis continue to elude responsibility in the public… Read more
What I Don’t Eat
People always ask vegans “What do you eat then?” as if the entirety of world cuisine was made up of meat and cheese. Let me instead enumerate what I do not eat, so maybe you can understand a bit better: I do not eat dead bodies. I do not eat reproductive juices or secretions. I do not consume anything from the breasts of another species, whether or not it has been made to go rancid and breed mold on purpose. I do eat anything digested and regurgitated by another species. That’s it. In those four rules lies the entirety of vegan eating. Vegan living on the other hand is a bit more complicated, what with the 10,000 different ways to write the words “ground up sheep” on a bottle of shampoo without writing “ground up… Read more
A Liberal Decalogue
From The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 3: 1944-1969, pp. 71-2. : Perhaps the essence of the Liberal outlook could be summed up in a new decalogue, not intended to replace the old one but only to supplement it. The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows: Do not feel absolutely certain of anything. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you. Do not fear to be eccentric in… Read more
Puritans love disasters. No sooner has some calamity befallen mankind than some hair-shirted scold emerges from his priest hole and starts wagging his finger. The message is always the same: ‘You are being punished for your immoral… Read more
On The Importance Of Blogging – Part IV
Almost three years ago, I left off this series of ruminations on what exactly blogging was (to me at least) with a discussion of what blogging is often mistaken for, but is not. In the intervening years I have gotten a lot more comfortable with blogging in general, and with how I see it, and now I feel compelled to update a bit and expand on what I have said previously. Let me begin with a quote from Roger Darnton, writing in The New York Review of Books, December 21, 2000: Time was when readers kept commonplace books. Whenever they came across a pithy passage, they copied it into a notebook under an appropriate heading, adding observations made in the course of daily life. Erasmus instructed them how to do it . . .The practice spread everywhere in early modern England, among ordinary readers as well as famous writers like Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, John Milton, and John Locke. It involved a special way of taking in the printed… Read more
Welcome to Georgia; world leader in salmonella fortified peanut butter products, two years… Read more
More on animal rights through anarchist politics in… Read more
Santayana On Haters
In The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel, George Santayana provides this excellent analysis of what Bertrand Russell called the fury of conventional people for those who depart from convention: It was the anger of the well-meaning but stupid man who is compelled against his will to ask himself indiscreet questions about what he has been doing as a matter of course. He doesn’t want to ask those questions because he knows that if he does he will be forced either to go on with what he is doing, but with the cynic’s awareness that what he is doing is wrong, or else, if he doesn’t want to be a cynic, to change the entire pattern of his life so as to bring his desire to do right into harmony with the real facts as revealed in the course of self-interrogation. To most people, radical change is even more odious than cynicism. The only way between the horns of the dilemma is to persist at all costs in the ignorance which permits one to go on doing wrong in the comforting belief… Read more
Posted in Pondering
Tagged Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, George Santayana, hypocrisy, Noam Chomsky
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Here’s a nearly complete list of all the laboratory animal suppliers, fur farms, trappers, furriers and slaughterhouses in the United States. Disclaimer: I do not encourage illegal immoral activity or… Read more
Another Dinner Is… Read more
Everyday banks exploits our debts, our savings, and our paychecks—to fund speculation, predatory lending, environmental destruction, and corporate expansion. This will be an indefinite strike which will not end until people’s debt is canceled just as Wall Street has been bailed out. It won’t finish until the current international financial system is abolished and alternatives are created that cover people’s needs and not those of… Read more
Ground Control To Major Jon: Target Located, Commence Preparations For… Read more
Bad Blogger, No Hummus For You
Well, haven’t I been remiss these last few months? No posts to speak of since the middle of October. It seems as if I ran out of things to say there for a bit. Never fear; I am just as opinionated and mouthy as before, so the ill-advised screeds and rants will recommence shortly. In the mean time, here are some highlights (in my opinion) of the last several months: I have reconnected with a lot of old friends and acquaintances recently, most of whom have turned out to be far more interesting people than I once thought they were. Hopefully they aren’t too disappointed by my continuing obnoxiousness. Everyone who ate anything I cooked over the holidays (which turned out to be quite a number) all responded with versions of “really, this is vegan?”. Yes, yes it is. Enjoy. Not everywhere is a cesspool of omnivore ignorance. Actually, most places aren’t. I just seem to be living in one, so it was really nice to have wait staff ask if we were vegan when we ordered vegetarian… Read more