The Paleo Diet (2002): [citation needed]

I've been a long time fan of George Dvorsky and Sentient Developments. I don't agree with everything Dvorsky writes: he's way into the "Transhumanism is an appropriate expression of socialism." He's long been an advocate of uplift just for the sake of uplift without sufficient underpinnings explaining why the arbitrary process known as evolution should necessarily lead to uplift as a moral imperative.

George recently revealed in a no-comments post, replete with completely predictable pre-emptive push-backs, that he had gone onto the Paleo diet, that his health required the intake of animal protein, and that his audience should rest assured that he is a "conscious carnivore" and still an animal rights proponent.

Curious about this Paleo diet, I went and picked up the original book by Loren Cordain, publish in 2003.

The book is a long list of statements that should all end with ^{[citation needed]}.

In order to distinguish his work from competing diet, Cordain spends an inordinate amount of time in the early chapters dumping on the Atkins diet, but he does so in a way that skews the research. He complains that the Atkins diet does away with fruits and vegetables, "Cancer-fighting fruits and vegetables!^{[citation needed]}" A lot of the book is like that. He goes deep into anti-salt and anti-fat, which I supposed looked good in 2003. Recent studies show that low-salt diets do nothing to prevent progression to hypertension, and low-fat diets do little to moderate or control cholesterol and atherosclerosis. My own physician pointed me to recent articles in JAMA indicting starches.

But what irks me most is that the Paleo diet, like the Slow Carb diet and every other diet on the market, is that to justify it to the masses it must delve deep, deep into nutritionalism.

Food is not a set of nutrients. It's not just a vehicle for the transmission of components, for Omega 3 and polyunsaturated fat and calcium chloride and so forth. Food is what we eat to sustain ourselves, it's pleasure and socializing and ritual and experimentation. Boiling food down to a Power Bar and a glass of water isn't breakfast, any more than porn is sex.

But somehow, to sell the product to the masses, The Paleo Diet, just like Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Body, must describe in excrutiating detail the trade-offs at the micro level.

I guess the basic message has been heard so often it no longer registers: all that sugar, simple starch, and readily digestible calories is what's making America fatter than ever, so stop eating those. Just like "exercise more" no longer registers.

Hell, I can shorten the modern guidelines to one sentence: Eat food you cooked yourself.

A Closet I'm Not Yet Ready To Confuse Mundanes About...

Last night, I was at a public event with a lot of public dignitaries, the kinds of people running for high, middle, and low office: Everything from Governor to Manager of the Sewers is up for a vote around here. (I often wonder what someone campaigning for Sewer Manager uses as a campaign slogan. "Vote for me and the shit will flow freely?" Wouldn't the constituent response be, "So, what else is new?")

I was talking to a woman who's the campaign manager for a colorful fellow running for a seat on some city somewhere nearby. I asked about an especially colorful badge he had, "Leader of all Generals of Washington State." She described the "Generals of Washington State" as a small bastion of male privilege devoted to the sorts of do-good meddling the post-aspirational high-middle-class retirees of activist Washington go in for.

She said, "Oh, you know, we only go around this life once, and you may as well make the most of it." She paused for a moment, misreading my expression, and said, "Unless you're a Buddhist. Or Hindu. Or Pagan, I guess."

What I was looking so consternated about was adding, "Or Transhumanist." Because opening up that can of worms was going to be more trouble than it was worth, at least at that moment.

Transhumanism isn't-- quite-- a religion. It doesn't have holy texts, rituals, or belief in an afterlife. (No, believing there is no afterlife is not a belief in the afterlife; it's a belief about reality, namely, that this is all there is.) It doesn't have a quintessential statement about what Huxley called "ultimate questions." But it does have hypotheses (that's what they are, because they can-- and will-- be tested) about how much life we human beings get to have, hypotheses that are more robust (in the scientific sense) than the beliefs of Buddhists or Christians.

Fundies Say The Darndest Things, But I Rarely Care

You know why I can't stand Fundies Say The Darndest Things? Because reading it reminds me of a Jack Handley quote: "We mock the wisdom of the ancients. But we can't mock them to their faces, and that's what annoys me."

Two Wines, Two Experiences, Woo!

On the advice of my local wine steward, Alan, I picked up a bottle of Gran Oristan, a Spanish wine from the La Mancha region. He recommended it as a reasonably complex and flavorful wine for the district. I found it a bit astringent, but with a good smell and taste, perfect for pairing with a strong pasta sauce (as well as in a strong pasta sauce). However, I was very put off by the dregs of the wine, of which there were a lot and, even without much jarring of the bottle ended up in the last two glasses.

On the other hand, Dynamic, a self-described red table wine from Lake County, California (53% syrah, 43% merlot, 4% cab-sav) was a perfectly acceptable, perfectly ordinary sub-$10 table wine with nothing to recommend it but its first impression as a perfectly acceptable, perfectly ordinary table wine. The end is a little unremarkable, a bit of dry mouthfeel, but nothing off-putting.

What was off-putting about Dynamic was the label. "The Biodynamic Tower is where, during cycles of the year, homeopathic teas are perpared to enhance and regulate plant growth and soil fertility." Everyone got that? Homeopathic fertilizers! The less good stuff in it, the more effectively it works, as long as you strike The Biodynamic Tower (Woo Woo) in just the right way with your magic wand!

I suspect it's the use of a separation tower to get that multi-wine mix that's the real magi, not the Biodynamic Tower or the "Made with Biodynamic Grapes" label that's the real secret to its mundane drinkability.