Swapped

      The Christopher Nolan directed Odyssey is generating a good deal of infernalweb ferment.  No surprise there because H-wood has rarely, if ever, stayed even close to the intent or factual basis of epic historical tales, fictional or otherwise.  But, add DEI, the "feminist perspective", and race swapping to the hoary paradigm and a woke dog's breakfast is what ensues.

    Therefore one can, conceivably, be entertained by such a product, but one will not actually learn anything at all.  Of course the objective is always to make money, not teach or realistically illuminate history.  It would be extremely difficult to closely hew to the "facts" of The Odyssey since such would depend on which translation of the work is used and how much mangling thereof in the service of boffo box-office happens.  And these days how much of the making will be in service to "modern" attitudes about, well, everything.

    As for the race swapping, which is virtually required currently, the new Odyssey is no worse than many other cinematic efforts, but I haven't seen much commentary about the cold fact that race swapping never ever goes the other way.  The usual suspects would become entirely un-glued if, say, a white actor would be chosen to lead in a bio of Frederick Douglass.  Or George Washington Carver, or Rosa Parks, or Martin Luther King, or Harriet Tubman, or Langston Hughes, or Sojourner Truth, etc etc. etc.

    Those marinating in high-dudgeon about such an idiotic casting move would be entirely justified in their anger.  However, the same suspects nod their heads in pleased approval when the situation is reversed.  Currently, race is not supposed to matter when casting a part, except when it most certainly does because there will be glaciers in Hades before a non-black actor plays a black historical figure in a movie. 

      

All Natural.

      Do not think that I’m one of that deranged lot who would be fine with humans going extinct or drastically reducing its numbers so nature in all its glory can return to its original state.  Its original state being that of animals beset by hunger, injury, pain, and usually violent death in only a few short years, or even months.  Yep, the wilderness was one fun place to hang out millions of years ago.  And natural disasters were and are no less daunting despite being entirely “natural”.  Poison sumac is natural.  Cobra venom is natural, volcanoes and tsunamis are natural.  
    A hawk munching on a mouse or a bear ripping a deer apart are natural.  Ice ages, burning deserts, insect borne diseases, and planet shaking earthquakes are natural.  Huge rocks impacting the earth and destroying thousands of species is just a natural function of the solar system.  Super-volcanoes that ravage continents are natural.  Sea levels naturally shift hundreds of feet between glaciation events with no human input.  The old saying “nature is red in tooth and claw” drastically understates the case.  Humans can’t “destroy” the earth, but “nature” can sure as hell destroy humans in wholesale lots, or even completely if it sets its mind to it.

     Let me repeat that humans cannot destroy the earth.  Not even gathering every single thermonuclear weapon in one place will make the rocky corpus of the earth take much notice of us.  "Saving the planet" is merely a term for asserting how much human endeavor may affect the atmosphere.  The "planet" is in not danger, but perhaps our cushy, safe, heated and air-conditioned virtue signaling existences might be.  Therefore we throw vast sums of money and effort (same thing) at the problem in hopes of halting a few degree average temperature increase.  Whether we are successful in that effort or not, the body of the earth is entirely indifferent, but it is not quiescent.  It moves, flows, recirculates, jerks, slides, and erupts.  And it does all that without the slightest human input, nor can any human input do a darn thing about it.  We might eventually be able to accurately predict volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, but we'll never be able to do anything about them.

     Unfortunately, we humans have a habit of settling right in the path of those volcanoes and earthquakes, the rim of the Pacific Ocean being the most glaring example.  But, damaging quakes spread far beyond tectonic plate boundaries.  For instance: If the earthquake that happened on the New Madrid fault in 1811 happened today, deaths could easily be tens of thousands of people with infrastructure damage handily surpassing a trillion dollars.  It would also be a serious blow to the economy which could take decades to recover.  And let's not even talk about what is possible on the west coast.

     Oh sure, even the most virulent "Save the planet" crusaders will not object to anything I've said about the body of earth itself, if they think about it for a few minutes, but thinking clearly on this subject is in extremely short supply. 

       

     

      

      

Worse Than Smoking

     Few, if any, sane persons would argue that smoking a pack of cigarettes a day is good for you.  It manifestly is not.  However, smoking a pack a day is not as bad as eating the carb-saturated Standard American Diet.  Cigarette smoking drastically increases the likelihood of cancer and emphysema, but it does not affect the rampant plague of auto-immune diseases directly.

     In fact the S.A.D severely reduces the ability of our immune systems to deal with the damage of smoking cigarettes.  Combining smoking with the S.A.D, which is a nearly 100% correlation, and the assault on our health pegs the awfulness meter.

     Vaping made a big dent in cigarette smoking, but proved to have its own serious problems.  Currently there is a big move to nicotine pouches, sometimes called tobacco-free snus.  Nicotine is of course addictive, but its metabolic effects are no more insalubrious than caffeine.  Nicotine divorced from its smoky delivery system is wildly less harmful in general.  Therefore, using tobacco-free snus for its nic-hit will not noticeably impact a low-carb diet.  In fact combining the two is an excellent way of repairing the  cellular damage that smoking cigarettes causes whilst not having to deal with nic withdrawal.  In short, the S.A.D. will kill you quicker whether you smoke or not.

Millennium Vignettes

     More doings in the alternate Chickweed universe.  To wit: A collection of remembrances from the characters in "The Millennium Seekers".  It is presented in the same form as the Vignettes from "The Thoraxian Incident".  It is extra spicy, X-rated definitely, so be warned.  A pdf of the piece is linked below.

 

Millennium Vignettes

Artificial

      Lately, artificial flavors and dyes have been attacked as things that need to be banned from junk food, along with a variety of other dubious chemicals.  A worthwhile endeavor to be sure, but I am of the opinion that this is what might be called a one percent problem, wherein the base ingredients of junk food, refined grains and sugar, are far worse bad actors.  Almost by definition junk food cannot be made from remotely healthy ingredients.  

     And no, "whole grain" flours have no more significant health benefits than the cheapest loaf of bread in the market.  This is a 1%/99% situation as well, but in reverse.  In other words whole grain flours are, at best, one percent better than ultra-fine ground white flour in terms of how a human metabolism processes them.  If you doubt that try eating a couple of slices of groovitational artisanal whole grain sprouted Ezekiel bread, check your glucose level an hour later, then repeat the process with two slices of the bleached chemical foam known as white bread.  You will see a similar glucose spike in both cases, with the whole grain spike taking a minute or two longer, but the spike will be nearly, even exactly, the same.

     The whole grain stuff has more fiber, which accounts for the slight delay in spike compared to the wondrous bread, but metabolically speaking it's a wash.  If one keeps total carbs under five percent of the total, then a piece of bread or two every once in a while is manageable.  Add to that bread three doughnuts, two Ho-Hos, a bagel, a candy bar, a sugar saturated coffee drink, and six Oreos on a regular basis then you are marked for an early painful death.  In France and Italy, for instance, bread consumption is common but not very high.  The diff. is that they include all the other insulin spikers far less often.

     In summation, artificial dyes and flavors are way down the list of bad food actors and are not the proximate cause of the explosion of autoimmune conditions in this country.  Substituting them for "safer" alternatives won't make a dent in the current health crisis.