Good food too
Posted on 07/12/2002 5:13:15 PM PDT by rhema
The World Health Organization (WHO) held 3 days of meetings last week on acrylamide, a carcinogen that forms when "rice, potatoes and cereals are fried or baked." Another white rat killer.
Death squads have descended previously on water, air and popcorn. Now fries, to wit, "Care for some cancer with that burger?" Somewhere out there lurks a Pringles can with my name on it. Oh, the sting of death heaped upon us by the deep fryer.
We are all going to die. The mortality rate is, and always has been, 100%. But this obsession with every remote danger grows annoying. Death zealots focus on probabilities as likely as Julia Roberts' new marriage lasting. TBS's Worst Case Scenario is a TV show full of survival tips should you find yourself in a submerged car or forced to jump from a moving one.
Women have been delivering babies for centuries, squatting in those acrylamide-infested rice fields to give birth. Now physicians bemoan the risk in this natural process and advocate giving women the choice for C-sections over risky vaginal deliveries.
The National Highway Traffic Administration is studying food consumption behind the wheel. Snacking drivers cause too many accidents, with coffee and chili producing the highest accident rates (before we knew the exponential mortality rate for those who eat French fries whilst driving). Halting dining in our cars apparently not being an option, regulators now study whether fast food joints should all use cups that fit car holders. Why not require auto manufacturers to put small, medium and large cup holders in cars? One chain, fearful of government mandates, will voluntarily use thicker shredded cheese so that its tiny bits of floating cheddar don't distract drivers.
Post-9-11, death cowards emerged en masse. One man bought 75 rolls of duct tape to seal his basement. Ace Hardware does a land office business selling plastic sheeting to the fearful for sealing windows against nuclear or biological warfare.
Children are more likely to die from the safety precautions adults mandate. Take a gander at children on bikes. If they seem inept it is because their parents have forced them to wear helmets so large that they are riding bikes while trying to balance what amounts to a basket of fruit on their heads. Since the advent of bike helmets, there are actually more head injuries. Riders are top heavy and dropping like flies.
We have heard the assaults on dodge ball. But safety advocates seek to eliminate: tag (slower children may over-exert); hide-n-seek (dangerous hiding places); red rover (violence, hitting, "red" is offensive to American Indian children); musical chairs (pushing, shoving, collapsing chairs); and catch ("invites injury," details not provided).
The National Association for Sport and Physical Education advocates safer games such as "Shake," instead of tag -- when you catch up with your fellow player, you shake his hand in lieu of the death's door touch with, "You're it." "Teal rover," complete with nonoffensive color, requires children to switch places on a field, moving across in orderly slow fashion when the teacher yells, "Teal!" "Special chairs" has students in a circle of chairs as the teacher moves from child to child, telling each why he is special. Instead of catch, play "Hold." Each child holds a ball and studies it, but no throwing. Fun!
Why not just strap children into chairs all day to avoid injuries? Wait, we do that with video games and DVDs. They don't want to ride their bikes - too much to strap on to get ready. Safety obsession has created every disincentive in the world for leaping, hopping, running and cavorting. We use Ritalin instead of tag, catch and teal rover.
Oddly, death squads dismiss major safety concerns. School buses don't have seat belts. The laws of physics and whiplash still apply inside school buses. We ticket parents whose children aren't strapped in the family car like Neil Armstrong for Apollo, but bouncing about school buses like pinballs is just fine for young 'uns.
Children with pink eye are banished from school for 3 days. But AIDS is not a communicable disease. High schools teach children not to worry about it; use a condom.
Our obsession with safety does succumb to dollars, as in the cost of putting belts in buses, and to political correctness. Dodge ball, tag and catch aren't banished because they're dangerous. They are banished because some children are superior players and this is a country that demands mediocrity. We're not revamping the SAT for equality only to have dodge ball stratify children by ability.
We're can't fear AIDS because we fear offending the gay community more. We fear terrorism, but would rather have our bottoms and bags searched in airports and purchase duct tape than target Arab males.
We're all going to die. Some from errant dodge balls, some from drinking drivers with improperly sized cup holders, and a few poor stiffs will get it from acrylamide. There is no hazard-free world, but there are a few real dangers we might fix. Until we do, armed gunmen take more lives at LAX in one day than acrylamide fries ever will.
A pig. In a cage. On antibiotics.
If fried anything caused cancer my granny would have died well below the age of 101.
Thanks for the suggestion. I just picked up O'Rourke's CEO of the Sofa.
Ditto for my grandmother, who was 98 when she died.
Yeah and I wish they would go back to frying them in beef tallow. Those were the days!!
There's probably a study on the inherent perils of kite flying that will deter WHO from doing so.
J.R.R. Tolkien had it right: death is a gift, that we may not be trapped within the circles of the world forever. Though I'm far from done seeing what's in those circles ;-)
A pig. In a cage. On antibiotics.
Oh, oh. That anti-creature prepositional phrase will probably earn you a spot on PETA's enemies list.
You were looking for something to read?
Also notice my post #52 on your thread.
BTW, we have the same FReeper birthday!
That's incredibly similar to C. S. Lewis's observation: "[Death] is a safety-device because, once Man has fallen, natural immortality would be the one utterly hopeless destiny for him." (Miracles, chapter 14)
I just mentioned that book on another thread. Great book. I haven't read "CEO of the Sofa" yet but I've read every one of his other books. . ATTITW is my favorite O'Rourke book. I've given away more copies of that book than any other.
Time for a quasi-biblical emendation: "By their members ye shall know them."
REALLY?
I can't find this statistic on the web.
Is it true?
Anyone else have the skinny on this fact?
Good food too
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