Snapshot is annoyed by the Whole Foods Cargo Cult, and fisks an article about people who just care a little too much about organic shade-grown fair-trade breath mints:

It's not even just about food anymore. The chain's first all-organic clothing section is here, with a private dressing room if you need to try on that $44 robe.

You're killing me, people.

“They're not selling food,” supermarket guru Phil Lempert says. “They're selling life.”

Make it stop.

“Whole Foods offers a psychological absolution of our excesses,” says Jerald Jellison, psychology professor at University of Southern California. “After filling your cart with sinful wine, beer, cheese and breads, you rationalize it's healthy, so that cancels out the negatives.”

I'm begging. I'm on my knees here.

And yet his prayers go unanswered.

For some reason, I think this sort of dovetails with the post about genes influencing religiosity. Perhaps some have the genes for a questing soul seeking higher meaning, some don't. I, personally, don't, unless a shot on Paula Zahn is considered higher meaning.

Genetically influenced or not, there is obviously, in many, a desire for transcendence. Many have abandoned God, or at least "God" as He is generally understood, and yet that nagging desire for transcendence, for a deeper connection with the universe, remains.

With God not an option, it seems that some seek meaning and solace in four-dollar avacadoes, taking soul-soothing pleasure in the fact that somewhere out there in the universe there's an avacado-farmer giggling his ass off that people are willing to pay that much for a piece of unprocessed guacamole.

To each his(her) own.

BTW: My pop-culture trivia genes failed me. Isn't there some song about finding love in a supermarket or a shopping mall or something? I think there is, but I couldn't remember it, and I couldn't find it on Google.

It's a whiny kind of song.

Call Off the Hounds Update: I'm still not sure what song I was thinking of. But I know the tune I had in my head wasn't even the right song.

The tune I had in my head was Stacy Lattisaw's cover of The Moments' Love on a Two-Way Street, from, oh God, 1981. Don't click on that, by the way, unless you want part of the awfulness which refuses to depart my brainspace.

I guess the reason I thought it was sung by a whiny effeminate man was that it was sung by a whiny female singer.

Those Pesky Crunchy Cons: And I thought they were mythical beasts only occasionally spied at The Corner.

Okay, okay, if you like Whole Foods, by all means shop there. Snapshot's rip, and mine as well, has less to do with Whole Foods per se than the talismanic and totemic power that irreligious-but-still-questing liberals invest into simple food purchases.

If you're buying for the quality, or because you don't like Alar, fine. But spare me this excess:

“They're not selling food,” supermarket guru Phil Lempert says. “They're selling life.”

They're selling salvation via organic salmon. And that's just dopey.

Posted by: Ace at 03:18 PM | Comments (34)
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AP Nonsense: Alaskans fear oil exploration in ANWR.

The article focuses on a few cherry-picked quotes from the citizens of a tiny town. Unmentioned in the article: something like three quarters of Alaskans favor this drilling, and have for going on two decades now.

Besides, you know what? Bears? Fuck 'em.

Just look at them. Filthy shiftless layabouts, doing nothing all day but scheming about Total Ursine World Domination.

We ought to lock up the lot of them and throw away the key.

PS: Actually, I love bears (well, I love them, but I don't love-love them). But I think they're level-headed enough creatures to not freak out at the sight of an oil rig.

Learn Something Every Day: Yannow, I used to like polar bears. Because they're, well, freaking adorable.

But I'm informed by commenters that they're one of the few animals that actually deliberately hunts humans.

I don't know how I feel about that. On one hand, yes, they're dangerous. On the other hand... I admire the cojones. You know what it takes to be a man-hunter?

It takes brass balls to be a man-hunter.

And Captain Ned tells me they sometime even attack Seawolf-class nuclear attack submarines.

On one hand, huge vicious bastards.

On the other hand-- awwww. So cute.

On the other other hand -- arctic badasses.

Posted by: Ace at 01:23 PM | Comments (26)
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The Urban Grind (scan down to first post of March 17th) has the dope, which I haven't seen anywhere else today:

Lawyers for the Yemenis are worried the government will try to move them from the Guantanamo Bay facility to another country in order to “warehouse them in a prison, provide them with no legal process and, in effect, avoid the American court process altogether,” Marc Falkoff, an attorney for the detainees, said Sunday.

U.S. District Judge Rosemary CollyerÂ’s ruling Saturday on an emergency petition blocks any attempt to move the Yemenis until a hearing is held on their lawyersÂ’ request for at least 30 days notice if their clients are to be transferred.

She adds:

Now call me unsophisticated, but why should people wishing to destroy us and our way of life be defended within a system they are trying to destroy?

I think we need to have a debate on the limits of "civilization," and the still-robust need for the civilized to occasionally act in reasonably savage manner -- against those who are themselves made monsters by their own choices.

Via Instapundit comes this related thought by The Volokh Conspiracy, regarding the Iranian government's savage-yet-appropriate execution of one of the most vile serial killers ever known:

I like civilization, but some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness. I think it slights the burning injustice of the murders, and the pain of the families, to react in any other way.

And that's precisely why I support torturing those who are either caught red-handed committing terrorism or are well-known, indisputable leaders of the movement. If inflicting pain on these bastards can lead to one tip that catches another terrorist or even an entire cell -- thus sparing the lives of at least three or four innocent people, and perhaps several dozen (perhaps a thousand!) -- I say that's worth a few broken fingers.

And, to be quite honest, even if the torture doesn't produce useful information -- it's still rough justice. Those who step outside the most basic rules of humanity have no cause to complain when humanity decides to suspend its basic rules as regards them.

Posted by: Ace at 01:14 PM | Comments (5)
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Well played, James Lileks. Well played indeed:

I was clicking around, following some links about Wolfowitz’ nomination to the World Bank (mrghmghfm) (surpressing mad laughter) (mrghmghfm) (Sorry, mwa HAHAHAHAHA) and encountered one of those brand-name sites I don’t visit much because the proprietor has nothing to say and no particular skill at saying it. He referred to that “filthy Wolfowitz.”

Do you often come across the word “filthy” applied to many politicians? No. Can you recall which group, in the last, oh, 60 years, got tarred with that word most frequently? Just curious. If the word rings no bells for you, then I’m overreacting. Obviously rung no bells for the author. I expect he will be equally unaffected if Trent Lott refers to “that uppity Rev. Jackson.”

Now, while I give Lileks all props and much love for refusing to give this idiot traffic, I -- I can't believe I'm going to say this -- have to defend Willis on this point.

Yes, it may be that "filthy" was used frequently to describe Jews at one time. But it was also used to describe a lot of other poor immigrant groups, and furthermore, no one's really been keen on the "filthy Jew" descriptor for a long, long time.

"Crafty," sure. But "filthy"? That may have anti-semitic overtones, but definitely of the old, old school variety.

And while Lilieks attempts to analogize to the derisive "uppity," I don't think he's persuasive. "Uppity" was said in earnest as recently as the seventies -- maybe even the eighties, who knows -- and is still used ironically (as a mocking of previous racial tropes) today.

Here's the thing: It's fun for us on the right to use the ludicrously thin-skinned, ultra-sensitive identity-politics cudgel against the left on occasion, as they use it against us. But only to mock them.

It's probably not a good idea to do so seriously. The left uses these claims of "racial insensitivity" in a frankly partisan and disingenous manner; we ought to chide them for doing so, not emulate their ridiculousness.

We ought to convince the left to calm the hell down about perfectly innocent and harmless word choices -- "niggardly," anyone? -- not follow them down that rabbit-hole of PC lunancy.

The proper way to slam Filet-O-Fish for this is to point out his previous ridiculous cries of "racism" based on, for example, my calling him fat. ("Corpulent," you see, is apparently now an accepted racial category.) And to point out that if you want to accuse others of racism based on such slender reeds, you'd better be the Bestest Boy Scout In the World as regards these matters yourslef; you can't claim one standard for your opponents and a much more lenient standard for yourself.

The left plays gotcha with this crap all the time. It's like being in an argument with someone and then they suddenly seize on a single word you said and read into all sorts of horrible things and bad intent. And you're like, "Whoa! I wasn't even thinking anything along those lines!" I think everyone needs to calm down on that score.

And so to cry anti-semitism over the word "filthy"? Seems churlish to me.

And I say that with all due respect to the Churls, some of whom are my best friends. My agent, my accountant... I even once almost dated a half-Churlish girl. You know, Churls are basically good people, same as you or me.

I just wish they'd lay off the garlic.

Thanks to See-Dubya.

Disagreement: Gnostic Surface thinks Lileks is right:

It grieves me deeply to differ with either our host or with A-double-lizzle, but I think that Lileks truly found le mot juste when he compared "filthy" with "uppity". I suspect that it's an age thing: I don't remember the 40's (born mid-50"s), but I do remember the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon years where "filthy Jew" and "uppity Negro" were the polite versions of the more standard formulations.

Perhaps we were more exposed to human ignorance then, perhaps the constant diet of WWII movies on TV (hey, they were only 20 years old, and B&W movies worked great on B&W TV!), but to this graying gentile the point seems apt.

Now, I know Lileks is significantly younger than I, falling well within the fat part of the blogging demographic, but one must admit that his interests and proclivities have exposed him to a far greater amount of mid-20th century material than is typical. So, gently please: St. James the Great deserves the benefit of the doubt; He Who Should Not Be Linked does not.

Point taken. I don't really know for sure, to be honest. I just know that I personally don't think I've ever heard "filthy Jew" before, though I have heard "uppity Negroes" (though the latter always in an ironic manner).

Posted by: Ace at 12:34 PM | Comments (34)
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That being the case -- it now seeming that being religious is a "natural" orienation, and one the afflicted "cannot change" or "be cured" of -- do you think Frank Rich will stop maligning Christians?

Genes may help determine how religious a person is, suggests a new study of US twins. And the effects of a religious upbringing may fade with time.

Until about 25 years ago, scientists assumed that religious behaviour was simply the product of a person's socialisation - or "nurture". But more recent studies, including those on adult twins who were raised apart, suggest genes contribute about 40% of the variability in a person's religiousness.

...

Now, researchers led by Laura Koenig, a psychology graduate student at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, US, have tried to tease apart how the effects of nature and nurture vary with time. Their study suggests that as adolescents grow into adults, genetic factors become more important in determining how religious a person is, while environmental factors wane.

Posted by: Ace at 12:16 PM | Comments (19)
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What a bizarre thing it is that the Republican Party actually votes in favor of reducing spending.

But the bizarre occasionally happens:

Lacking votes to pass the budget, House Republican leaders struck a deal yesterday with conservative members who had demanded reforms to the spending process.

The deal is a major win for the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC) and signaled a rare concession from powerful GOP leaders.

Republican leaders had charged that the reform demanded by members of the RSC would tie the leadershipÂ’s hands and empower House Democrats. But realizing that they would otherwise lack the votes to pass the budget this week, the GOP leaders yesterday agreed to conservativesÂ’ demand that waiving budget rules for future spending bills require approval by a majority of the House.
...

Conservative proponents of reform responded that they liked the budget Republicans passed out of committee and that they simply want to enforce it, the reason they have cited for pushing budget reform.

“Our ambition was that members of the majority have an opportunity to defend the budget of the majority on the House floor,” Pence said yesterday, announcing the agreement along with conservative Reps. Paul Ryan (Wis.), Jeb Hensarling (Texas) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.). “If any one of the 10 appropriations bills exceeds the budget, any member of Congress would be able to raise a point of order and that would be subject to debate and vote.”

“I believe this is a significant step forward,” Pence said.

BTW: Mike Pence is a fellow blogger.

Posted by: Ace at 11:19 AM | Comments (3)
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A six-legged walking logging vehicle.

Dave wants to know: When can we put a gun on it? Even if it's not going to be used by the military... there is still the possibility of attacks by vicious gangs of marauding crack-addled bears.

Bears

I just don't trust 'em.

Posted by: Ace at 10:42 AM | Comments (8)
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Well, no I don't. But in an interview with Right Wing News, Henry Copeland of BlogAds teases me with the possibility:

John Hawkins: Do you believe the number of advertisers and amount of revenue generated by blogging is going to continue to grow for the rest of this year and into next year?

Henry Copeland: I think the numbers will continue to grow at LEAST until bloggers get 0.1% of the total US annual advertising spend, $250 billion. That may take 3 years or it may take 18, but it is inevitable. Bloggers understand their subjects and their audiences better than anyone else in media AND they've got the lowest overheads. After all, pajamas cost much less than suits.

John Hawkins: I want you to play Nostradamus here -- don't worry, everybody understands you're just speculating -- and give me an estimate: How many bloggers do you see reaching the "earning a living" threshold over the next few years?

Henry Copeland: I'd be thrilled to reach 500. But 5000 is possible. And if things go really well 50,000.

I don't imagine this will be of much interest to anyone except except bloggers. Except to the limited extent that non-bloggers may be curious to see how the alternative media is finally getting some real (i.e., cash-money) attention.

But to bloggers, of course, it's all very interesting indeed.

Posted by: Ace at 09:03 AM | Comments (10)
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Fat Kid wanted to know why I didn't re-post this, one of my favorite, oddest Top Tens. Well, you don't have to hold a gun to my head to re-post old material.

...

Some people love potatoes. Some people could take them or leave them. Some people don't like potatoes much at all.

And then some people despise potatoes so passionately they malign them in the most venomous, hateful terms. An entire "subculture of hate" has sprung up in opposition to the innocent, humble tater. Committed "tater-haters" spread their venom in order to undermine what they call "the Spud Agenda."

Top Ten Disparaging Terms for Potatoes, By People Who Really, Really Hate Potatoes

10. "The Irish Scourge"

9. "The Predatory Pedophiles of the Plant Kingdom"

8. "Idaho turdmuffins"

7. "Hitler-tubers" (archaic form: "Kaiser-tubers")

6. "Satan's Yams"

5. "Dirt-Testes"

4. "Insidious, Godless Commuspuds"

3. "Nature's Little Zionists"

2. "Dirtbacks" (considered a racial slur against potatoes)

Â…and the Number One Disparaging Term for Potatoes, by People Who Really, Really Hate PotatoesÂ…

1. "Retard-apples"

Posted by: Ace at 08:56 AM | Comments (12)
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He wants everyone to know he's alive, in Ankara, and blogging:

The big story in today’s papers, both Turkish language and English, is a diplomatic tempest in a teapot over Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer’s upcoming state visit to Damascus. (The visit was scheduled to occur in March, but as the English-language New Anatolian gently puts it, “the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri changed the circumstances in the Middle East.” Yes, yes it did.)

U.S. Ambassador Eric Edelman had said Monday that international consensus was building for the Syrians to get out of Lebanon, and that “we hope that Turkey will also join in that international consensus, by supporting a thorough and immediate withdrawal from Lebanon.” In Washington, that’s about as controversial as saying... well, that there are a lot of Starbucks around. But the Turkish press and some Turkish officials interpreted that as pressure for Sezer to cancel his visit.

I'll be doing some globe-trotting myself. I'm pleased to announce that for tomorrow only I will be live-blogging from the 33rd Street Jewish Youth Center Master-Level Canasta Tournament.

Posted by: Ace at 08:52 AM | Add Comment
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