Entry #5: Don't Eat the Pink Slime...

In the back of your child's school cafeteria?

   Watch this video. Read this article. After you're done vomiting, let’s talk a little bit about what we’ve just seen.  This is of course hot on the heels of my last post discussing Food Inc., and now we get a little bit more of the truth. To be honest, I can appreciate the desire to get every last scrap of useable meat off the cow, but I would just stop at using it in dog food. These are some of the most disease-ridden cuts of meat in the cow, and anyone that works in food service (i.e. fast food) should be able to tell you that keeping meat at “low temperatures” (between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit) results in the perfect breeding conditions for bacteria of all kinds.  But that’s ok, cause then they wash it in ammonia.  Ammonia. The same ammonia that can be found in Windex, Lysol, and URINE. By a show of hands, how many members of this audience would be willing to drink even one of those? Sit down Bear Grylls; you don’t count.  Do you know what ammonia does to the body? IT BURNS THROUGH YOUR CELLS! Your body already produces a weak form of ammonia as a waste product. Eating ammonia would be like putting carbon dioxide back into your body (Bonus tip: guess how soda gets "carbonated"). THIS IS IN YOUR FOOD! THIS IS IN YOUR CHILDS FOOD! The USDA doesn’t even need to tell you about it! According to them,  it’s a “process” and in low enough quantities that it won’t harm the average person. And there is no way the meat is safe in this situation. The best case scenario is that you’re eating beef and Windex. The human body has a funny way of storing toxins until it can deal them properly. This stuff can build up in your system until it starts doing serious damage, along with all of the other chemicals that are in your food. And that’s IF they put enough ammonia in to kill the bacteria.  Otherwise, you’re eating E. coli AND Lysol! You’re getting sick from the germs (which I remind you were given free rein to reproduce at a rate that puts rabbits to shame), and your body is so messed up, it can’t even defend itself. 

  

And we take this god-awful concoction, and put it into our children’s lunches?! Their immune systems haven’t even had a chance to develop, and we’re assaulting them with the culinary equivalent of biological warfare? Please tell me I’m not the only one that thinks this is INSANE! They can put it into the kids’ lunches, into the meat you buy at the supermarket, and I’d bet good money that it’s in most of the fast food joints too. NOWHERE IS SAFE!

Warn your kids now, so that they can prepare accordingly.

   I can only hope that health-food stores like Sprouts and New Frontiers refuse to sell this garbage. Like Jamie Oliver said, your best bet is to get the butcher to grind some other meat for you, in front of you. It might be a pain, but I would take a minor inconvenience over horrible tainted meat any day of the week. I’m going to go throw out my hamburger now, and try to think of something a little more peppy for my next entry. All this evil meat talk is starting to get to me. Until next time remember…

Entry #4: Partially Hydrogenated, Pasteurized, Processed, Homogenized, Chlorinated, Meat Type Product.

As a special treat in my English 101 class, we got to see a movie called Food Inc. After the hour-and-a-half long horror fest that showcased the American food system, I didn’t think anyone in the room would ever eat meat again.  The film mostly focused on the horrible treatment of animals, farmers, workers, and even customers of the major meat packing plants. We got to see chicken and cows too fat and sick to walk under their own power, which are crammed into miniscule pens, hip deep in feces, and packed together like sardines. We heard the tale of a woman whose son died in 11 days from eating a hamburger tainted with E. coli, and her years long legal battle to try to change food packing policy. Even the farmers involved are usually so far in debt to the government that refusing to follow the government’s policies can, and typically will, result in total financial ruin.

   This is actually not my first time visiting this territory. In the past, I’ve watched movies like Supersize Me and read books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and every time I walk away nauseous and hating the world we’re becoming. I can’t stand the lows big-name businessmen will sink to in the name of profit; unsanitary conditions for both the workers and the meat (“you dropped the chicken on a cockroach? Don’t worry about it. Throw it back on the line.”), chemical treatments (chlorine bathes, ammonia bathes, growth hormones, modified feed), and even trucking in illegal immigrants to perform the labor, then calling the border control to haul them off once the workers are “used up”. From a perfectly economic view, all of it is justified in the name of faster, cheaper meat. However, a perfectly economic world does not include any thing with a heart, a conscience, or a soul, just ways to maximize production and minimize resource use. Since I, at least, happen to have at least two of the forbidden items mentioned, I guess this world isn’t perfect for the greedy swine that control our food supply.

"Don't worry. You can trust me with your food"

    I do love seeing movies like this being produced, simply because every release will open the eyes of a few more individuals. I’m currently trying to convince my girlfriend to watch the movie, but she knows that the animal cruelty in it will break her heart. But that is exactly why I want her to see it. So that she knows what goes on behind the scenes and how these animals are treated. The truth is often times ugly, but nothing worth doing or knowing is ever easy. Of course it’s easier to turn a blind eye to what’s going on in this country than to face the truth; it’s also easier to ignore your baby when it’s crawling towards the stairs, or to ignore the fire burning in the middle of your kitchen. But that doesn’t make it right. If every time a person eats, he or she could end up dead, then I think we should at least be allowed to know what we need to know to make an informed decision. Thank you for listening to my mad ravings, and remember to question everything.  

Grey Matters #2: Audio Inkblot


   Time for some audience participation! Below, I've uploaded a song, and all I want you to do is listen to it, and in the comments, tell me what it makes you think of. Anything at all. If it’s a scene or a place, describe it. If it evokes certain emotions, which ones and why? Explanations will be under the song; I don’t what influence the experience anymore than I have to. Ready?

   What did you think? Please leave a comment. If you're reading this as part of a writing class, now's a good time to practice descriptive writing. All done? Good. Now I may talk freely. Highlight the area below to see my thoughts...

   Start here--->:The reason I put this up is because I love to see how different minds interpret the same data. Everyone who heard the above song imagined some different. Just on a few of my friends, I’ve had it call forth whale songs, a haunted forest, and a temple for meditation. I was afraid that if put this where you could see it, something I say might influence your version of this experiment.

   For the record, this song is called Ethnicolor pt.1, and the artist is Jean Michel Jarre. I love most of his music since it’s almost all instrumental. Most of his stuff is a lot more up-beat than this one, but Ethnicolor has one of the strongest images for me, so I figured it would be as good a start as any for these experiments. I will be looking for more songs like this one to post in the future, and I’m always willing to take suggestions. If you do suggest something, please keep in mind that any words in the song are probably trying to tell a story or message, and that could limit the varieties of experiences. However, that doesn’t necessarily exclude them entirely. I do have one I might post later that’s sung in a foreign language, thereby shrinking the chance of the story affecting any visions. Ve vill see…

   Finally, in case you’re wondering what I think of when listening to this song, it makes me think of Nazis killing elephants. Bear with me here, and kindly stop laughing. The long sound at the beginning and throughout that gradually gets louder sounds to me like an elephant crying out in pain. The background “ahhh” makes me think of a choir at a funeral procession. The “Ein so” sounds like a German voice, and when I put Germans together with sorrow, Nazis are one of the things I think of. Why would Nazis want to kill elephants? Maybe they want the ivory, maybe they were looking for something else to kill. I don’t know; I’m not that evil. The “tut” about a minute-and-a-half in is a girl crying, maybe because her tribe lived in peace with the elephants, and now all she can do is watch and cry as they’re slaughtered. “Momentine” might be the girl’s father trying to console the grieving youth. I have no idea what the bouncy video game noise in the middle is, and is about the only thing I would remove from this piece. The rest of the sounds either add to the sorrow of the moment, or are more germen-esque voices. A sad piece to be sure, but a powerful one. :<--- end here.

   Hope you guys enjoyed the song, and if you enjoy the idea, let me know. Otherwise, I'll be here waiting for our next session. Hasta la vista

Entry #3: Did I Dream of Electronic Sheep?

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! OH MY GOD! I just had the most horrible nightmare. Ok. Ok. Let’s see, how did it start? I remember… Yeah, I remember going down a hallway. I think I was chasing someone special, and then I saw this… thing. It looked like it was supposed to be a human, but if it was, it was a bloated, nearly formless, mockery, with arms, legs, and body the shape and softness of massive sausages.  He (I think it was a he) was set on some kind of mobile chair. The chair didn’t even have wheels, it was just floating along! The man-blob was completely oblivious to my presence, his attention fully devoted to talking to a screen suspended in front of his face, which was displaying the face of another member of this increasingly strange race. I was startled to hear the voice from the screen also come from behind me, and I saw that I was walking between the two blobs. Why couldn’t they just turn toward else other and talk? I would maybe understand if their necks were broken, but they were lazily swinging their arms.

   As I wondered about these two, the hallway opened up into a huge promenade, and that’s when I them. Hundreds, no thousands, of the beings, all of them swollen into nearly spherical proportions, all wearing the exact same red outfit, and all of them in the hover chairs with screens projected right in front of their faces. Every. Single. One. Dear god, they were humans, weren’t they? Had the entire human race turned into these amorphous beings, or was it just this colony? Either way, I had to find who I was looking for and get out.

   I kept moving ahead, under a flashing screen welcoming me to “Economy”. Apparently, this was the used-to-be-humans way of saying “Mall”, because next thing I knew, I was in a shopping center of some kind that stretched out as far as I could see. I think it even had a dome over the entire structure, complete with a fake sky and a sun with the letters B-n-L plastered over it, though it could’ve had a mural of demons copulating with farm animals, and I still don’t anyone else would have noticed it. This new space was littered with neon advertisements, some a dozen feet tall or more, and on most of them I saw those same letters, BnL. Over a loudspeaker I heard a pleasing, soulless, woman’s voice announce “Buy n Large. Everything you need to be happy. Your day is very important to us.” “Buy n Large” must have been the name of the company that sucked out these people’s souls and replaced it with lard and technology. This was starting to make me sick, so I pressed on before “Buy n Large” could find me and put me in one of those hovering prisons everyone else was happy to ride.

  I tried to go back to my search, but one of the chair-bound men started to tell me to take his drink. If he would’ve just looked, he would have seen that I wasn’t a waiter, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away from the screen until it was too late. He kept leaning over further and further until he tumbled off of his chair with an (admittedly satisfying) plop. A pair of robots appeared out of nowhere to section off the fallen man from everyone else, though I think it was mostly so no one else would mistake him for a speed bump. I felt sorry for the poor guy. He was still human after all, and he couldn’t stand up, either because his muscles had atrophied away, or he just didn’t know how to walk without a machine to help him do it. Of course, I couldn’t leave him squirming on the ground like a huge maggot, so I helped him back into his chair, then got away while he was still stunned by seeing the world without a digital filter. I wasn’t even sure the air was safe to breathe, and I wasn’t about to stand around answering questions until the authorities brought me in to become part of this madhouse.

   I saw the woman I was trying to reach, the only other person that wasn’t a part of this mess, get on a bus equivalent of the hover chairs, and I made it on just in time. Of course, she was at the back, past several of the chair-people. We flew past the large front window of a school, and I got a glimpse inside. Jesus! Even the children, just toddlers by the look of it, were already so round and red in their outfits that they would look more at home in a plate of spaghetti. The “teacher” of this class was another robot with a screen, no humans in the room except the children. In that brief moment, the screen was displaying “B is for Buy n Large, you’re very best friend.” Indoctrination, probably from birth. Does this “Buy n Large” even have a heart, or did they sell that ages ago for profit?

   The last thing I remember was an electronic  billboard telling everyone to “Try blue!” I don’t why this of all things would do it, but the ad caught the attention of the people on the bus, and probably everyone else, who all pressed a button on their chair’s armrest, and the outfits of every last chair-person in the center turned blue. Was it a hive-mind mentality? Brainwashing? Or were all of these people really so obedient that they were “individuals” in name only?

   Worriedly, I looked forward to the girl I was after. I had almost made it to her. There was just one more chair in my way… BRRRRRRNNNNNNNGG! That’s when the alarm rang, and I was here, at home, away from the not-human-anymore-chair-blob-people. Thank god it was only a dream. I’m sure human will never let the world get that bad…"

   One day later...

     

                                                                                                   

"It's already happening! Screens everywhere,nobody can look away! And no one cares! The dream is already coming true! REPENT! REPENT! IT'S NOT TOO LATE! TURN AWAY FROM THE SCREENS! TURN THEM OFF, BEFORE THEY STEAL YOUR SOUL!!"

   The next day, Charm was admitted to the Phoenix Home for the Mentally Unfit. He was last heard screaming " I LOVE MY LEGS! DON'T TAKE MY LEGS AWAY FROM ME! I LOVE MY LEGS" before he broke down sobbing. The doctors on duty commented:

 "With a little luck, we'll have Mr. Wilke well again in six months. Now if you'll excuse me, It's time for him to ride the lightning." We here a Grey Goo hope for his speedy recovery. 

PS. Those of you who might be confused by this post, please follow this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1BQPV-iCkU...

Also, I just love the message below.

                                     

 Grey Matters #1: Smilin' Bob

Hello again. Today I have the first in what I hope will be a long line of fun thought experiments to share with my loving viewers. I might even have some interactive ones later, once I get better at blogger. For today though, I just want to make you think.
   One of my favorite subjects is the human brain. I love seeing the infinite varieties of behaviors and creations that trickle forth from that 3-lb lump of neurons hidden behind our eyes. Every movie, song, book, game, theory, picture, and discussion in history had to start as a spark in someone’s brain. And when you get right down to it, the brain is all we really are. Consider this:

Meet Bob. Ain't he happy?

   Let’s take a man. We’ll call him Bob. Bob is a perfectly average human. He has an IQ of roughly 100. He’s in his mid-thirties. He weighs around 200 lbs. He has a wife, a couple of kids, a house, a decent job, an upbeat attitude; for all intents and purposes, an average life. He likes football, apple pie, and playing with his kids. FOR THE SAKE OF THIS DISCUSSION, I’m going to have to be mean to Bob. I am sorry if your name is Bob, and believe me, I wouldn’t wish the following on ANYONE.
   Let’s say Bob is driving to work one day, and he gets in an accident. He survives, but his legs were both cut clean off. Despite being a little less mobile, he is still the same man, correct? Bob still has his family, he can still watch football, and he can still play with the kids. Bob’s body may have changed, but he is still the same person.

Bob Lite.

   Ok, after losing his legs, let’s say something else horrible happens, and his arms are cut off as well. Now he’s just a torso and head. Bob’s luck stinks, but he remains optimistic. His family helps to take care of him, he gets a job doing tech support using a headset, and he still pays his bills. Once again, I think we can agree that he is still the same guy. He’s a few pounds lighter, but he keeps on smiling his Bob smile.
   Now we need to get into the realm of science fiction, but it won’t get too bad. The next step in Bob’s series of unfortunate events in the removal of his torso. Maybe he figured he didn’t need the extra weight, but for whatever reason, Bob is now just a head. We put him in a jar full of a nutrient and oxygen rich solution, which provides him with everything he needs to survive. We managed to save his vocal cords, so he can still talk. He misses his body, but Bob continues to look on the bright side. He still has his family. He still has football. He still is alive, and for that, he is grateful. Still sounds like the same old Bob to me.
   You would think I’d be done torturing this poor man at this point, but we still have a few more steps.  I’m not even sure how to come up with reasons for these last few removals, so we might need to get imaginative. Regardless, next up is to remove his brain. Again, we put it in a jar full of perma-life solution, and to provide stimulation, we hook Bob’s brain up to an advanced computer, so he can still read books and watch the super bowl on-line, and he can see and hear his family through a webcam and microphone. He can “speak” through a speaker, and he still loves his family. He needs a little help, but he is still Bob.
   Believe it or not, we’re not done yet. “But how,” you may ask. After all, what else is there to take?  Quite a bit actually. Anyone with a basic understanding of the human brain knows that there are several portions of the brain are dedicated to keeping the heart beating, the lungs breathing, and the overall regulation of important bodily conditions. Bob no longer has a heart, or lungs, or arms, legs, eyes, ears, or a mouth for that matter. So, as the final step in Bob’s dismemberment, we bring in an EXPERT neurosurgeon. (Extra heavy emphasis on the expert part.) This Neurosurgeon proceeds to remove any part of Bob’s brain that is no longer needed.  We remove the parts that control the muscles, the parts that regulate body conditions, and even the parts responsible for hearing and speaking. We leave his memories alone, along with his personality, and the portions that allow him to recognize sights and sounds. (He doesn’t have eyes, and he’s already hooked up to receive those signals directly to the appropriate part of the brain, bypassing the eyes and the related circuitry entirely). Let’s estimate that we can remove about half of his brain without damaging anything vital to who Bob is.

This might be all that's left Bob once
we're done with him... 

   Now we’ve reached the end. What we have now is a carefully arranged and persevered collection of neurons, weighing only about a pound and a half. Contained within this remaining mass is Bob’s “essence”; his hopes and dreams, his worries and phobias, his loves and hates, his imagination, his disappointment that the 49ers lost the Super Bowl, and his perpetually perky attitude. All we’ve done here is just remove anything that wasn’t directly “Bob”. All the lost limbs and facial features were just a way for “Bob” to move, interact, and observe the world. The removed brain tissue and organs were all provided simply to keep this small network alive and functional. If we assume that substitutes, artificial though they may be, are provided to keep him alive and stimulated, then we have to conclude that what we have left at this point is still Bob. Remember, right now he stills knows the names of his wife and kids, he still remembers the taste of apple pie, and he can still perform the “brain-hooked-up-to-a-computer” equivalent of a smile. We haven’t taken anything essential to his personality or his self-awareness; we just condensed him from 200 lbs. down to about a pound and a half.
   Now here’s point that I’m trying to make with this whole, horrible story. That this holds true to all of us, that any person on the planet could be “boiled down” the same way. Every single thought that has come to any of us, no matter the stimulus, originates in the same 1½ lbs. of neural tissue that we have left from Bob. All of our art, our music, our poetry, our movies, our EVERYTHING, all came from this relatively small part of our bodies. Everything else in and on our bodies, for the purposes of this discussion, could be considered superfluous. All we really are can be contained in a coffee can. Kind of makes worrying about your appearance seem silly, don’t it?

Bob likes his new body.

   As for Bob, he does get a happy ending. Because of all that the scientists learned, and for being a good sport, the neurosurgeon was able to pull a few strings. He was given permission to clone a new body for Bob. Bob was mostly happy with his old body anyway, so the only difference was that the new body was a little taller, a little thinner, and had a full head of hair until they day he died. Bob’s whole family lived well off after he sold the rights to his story to a big-name movie studio. During this whole ordeal, he never despaired and kept on smiling.
   I’ll see you all again soon, and don’t worry; not all of these exercises will be this long or this gruesome. 



I don't own any of the pictures used here. I found them by using google to search for "bob, "bob oblong", "brain in a jar", and " body builder". I'm using them under the fair use act (I think) and if you want me to remove a picture, just tell me and i'll be happy to comply.

Entry #2 Smaller Than Life

When I start to think about new technology, one of the first things that jumps to my mind is nanotech. Nanotech is the study of products on a scale that requires the manipulation of molecules and even atoms.  I believe this video can give you a better explanation than I can...

 

Nifty, no? The thought of all of our current tech paling in comparsion to items only a (relatively) few atoms across is facinating to me. I guess size doesn't matter, huh?  (SLAP)Okay, no more bad jokes. The potentals truly are mind boggling. Nearly anything could be enhanced with nanotech. More efficient fuel, impossibly strong building materials, even genetic manipulation (to hopefully eradicate hereditary diseases).

  Of course, the mentioned nanoparticles aren't the only concern with this tech. Two of the most consistent problems are lovenly called "fat fingers" and "sticky fingers". Simply put, researchers need specialized equipment that is not only small enough to move molecules, but also won't stick to those same molecules. When you factor in the fact that those molecules will start to act different depending on size, shape, and even enviroment, nearly every application will require it own set of very specific tools. Another problem could be the situation known as "grey goo". The video mentioned nanotech that could replicate itself. An old science fiction story told of humans achiving nanobots that could do just that, but due to an oversight in the programming, the nanobots continued to reproduce, "devouring" anything available for materials. A fail-safe, perhaps like the degredation that occurs in human cells, would have to be implemented, and to that effect I do have to mention that as cells degrade, they do develop a variety of interesting prolems, including cancer. Those are just the start the of the problems that face nano-researchers. 

   Still, the video mentions that it would be wrong to just let this tech lay in stasis, and I agree wholeheartedly. There's too many benefits not to. This is actually one of the fields I might go into someday, and even if I don't, I still love this type of stuff. I think I'm going to go look some more up, so y'all have yourself a good weekend, y'hear.