The Biggest Stupidity

 Imagine you are a Scientist studying animal behavior in a Forest. A fire breaks out in the forest, all the animals instinctively run in the opposite direction. Than you notice an animal moving towards an area the fire has just passed, as it gets close, it goes over to a smoldering log and starts to suck the toxic smoke deep into its lungs. Than you notice other individuals of the same species gathering around each other doing the same thing. First you are dumbfounded, you shake your head wondering if you are hallucinating. What you are seeing goes against all the laws of Nature. You think to yourself why would an animal be stupid enough to purposefully suck toxic carcinogenic smoke into its lungs? As you sit there and watch in amazement at this unbelievable behavior,  you notice there are young animals also gathered around, some on their mothers back hitching a ride and others staying close to their mothers for protection and others suckling their mothers for nourishment. As you look more intently, you notice the young ones instinctively wanting to get away from this toxic environment but are afraid to leave the safety of their parents side. Some make a futile attempt to fan the horrible burning smoke from their faces while others just sit there with their eyes and lungs burning from the toxic acrid smoke. You wonder why any animal would subject their young to such punishment when a parents job is to protect their young and nourish their growth to become strong healthy adults. This goes against everything you have ever observed in the animal kingdom, it flies in the face of logic. You realize you have made an unbelievable discovery, so unbelievable in fact, that no other scientist on the planet believes you because they know Nature would never favor such a self destructing behavior, and any animal that would be stupid enough to do such a thing to themselves and their young would have become extinct a long time ago.
  One day after giving a lecture on what you have discovered, you decide to go outside during break time and get some fresh air. It's Autumn, the sky is an incredible blue and the air is crisp and clean and you can't wait to get out of that stuffy lecture hall. As you step out the door, instead of fresh clean air, you get a whiff of some acrid disgusting smelling smoke, you look upwind, and down on the sidewalk you see a group of scientists standing around talking while purposely sucking toxic carcinogenic smoke into their lungs. A light goes off in your head and you say half out loud, holly crap, you godda be kiddin Me!
  Humans are supposed to be the most intelligent species on the planet. How and why it would ever occur to such an intelligent species to purposefully suck hot acrid foul smelling smoke into there lungs is beyond me. Yet as far back as history goes, humans have been purposefully poisoning themselves and their offspring because of this mindless habit. Even though it makes no sense logically and flies in the face of all things natural, and even as their body tells them with violent indignation that this is totally wrong, it is actually their intelligence that allows these people to circumvent their natural instinct. No animal with a lesser brain would ever be so stupid!
  In just the US, smoking kills 438,000 people a year ( http://www.vahealth.org/cdpc/TUCP/documents/2008/pdf/Data%20and%20Statistics/Smoking-Attributable%20Deaths%20in%20Virginia_2008.pdf ) and 5.4 million worldwide
 ( http://www.inforesearchlab.com/smokingdeaths.chtml ) . It also costs the US 167 billion dollars ( http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/medicalnews/a/smokingcosts.htm )
  Smokers are some of the most disrespectful people on the planet, spewing stupidities like "I have a right to smoke if I want to". In all essence saying, "I have a right to kill myself if I want to". That may be so, but you have no right to kill your children and others in your family, or me for that matter,  just because you are a selfish moron. Yet for some reason the human society has allowed this stupidity to go on for thousands of years, what does this really say about human intelligence? Why is it if you smack your kid on the behind to teach them a lifelong lesson, or keep them in a hot car in the parking lot, society calls this child abuse. Yet if you poison your kid several times a day with poisonous carcinogenic smoke there is no recourse in our society. If you purposefully poison your child and put them in a situation that will cause them severe health problems ( http://www.livestrong.com/article/142409-diseases-passed-children-with-smoking-parents/ ), and in reality, possibly murdering them in the long run, society basically accepts this. I believe if you are a parent and you expose your child to this poison several times a day on a daily bases, you should go to jail for child abuse. Someone need to speak for those who can't and it is our job as a society to protect our young and should come together to protect them from selfish harming parents. If you or another animal causes even perceived harm to the young of another species, the parent of that young one has the natural right to fight, protect and possibly kill the threat to protect their young. This is the natural order of things. Yet if someone blows poisonous carcinogenic smoke, which is proven to cause severe health effects or at the least make your child very uncomfortable, into the lungs of your child, you basically have no recourse. If you give the idiot who did this what they deserve, you would be the one to go to jail! How is it that our society is so out of whack with the reality of family and Nature that we would collectively allow this behavior? Well for one thing Big Tobacco has a strong lobby in this country and as we all know money is much more important than the health of the nations people and their children. Many smart caring politicians have tried to protect us and the young future of the nation only to be voted down by the politicians who are being paid by the tobacco companies.
THINK!

You Godda Be Kiddin Me!

 I recently got a job as a "cook" in a nursing home in the town I live in. This is not just a Nursing home but a rehabilitation center, where elders come,  after an illness or accident to get better. It is bound by the laws of the state and the laws of the AMA and the American Dietetics Association.
 I put the word Cook in quotes for a reason. There is really no real cooking going on. They use a food service to supply the "food" they feed these sick and elderly people. 95% of what they give these people, in need of greater nutrition, comes out of a can or a box and is heated in a steamer till it barely resembles anything from this Earth. 85% of this "food" is seasoned with salt, pepper and Margarine! They use sugar, white flower artificial flavors and MSG to feed these sick people. You Godda Be Kiddin Me! Any couch potato that spends their life in front of the TV watching gossip shows knows, these foods are crap and will kill you over the short haul, why is it that the American Dietetics Association doesn't know it? After all the publicity about Trans fats and all the negative press it has gotten and all the scientific studies that have been done to prove it is super unhealthy, why is Margarine allowed within a mile of a HEALTH institution?
 I recently told a friend I finally got a job and when they asked what I was doing, I replied  "I kill old people with food"! I have spent a good part of my life learning about nutrition and eating healthy, it kills me every time I have to put a huge blob of plastic like Hydrogenated Trans Fats or a hand full of white flour and sugar into these peoples food as dictated by the American Dietetics Association. My very first day I asked why we are using margarine instead of butter and I was told it was alot cheaper! So I guess, the bottom line is more important (surprise) than the health of a Human being, a wise elder of our society, that has been entrusted to us for help. I recently went online to see the stats on this new company I am now working for. Turns out they are public and are beholding to their stock holders. So, here we are poisoning these Elders Of our society to save a couple of bucks while the CEO of the company made almost 3 million dollars last year!
  I am doing my best to try to educate the people I work with but as usual they look at me like I have two heads. Almost all the people I work with in the kitchen are poor and uneducated. They don't understand because they grew up eating the same food and feeding the same kind of food to their family's. When you feed your family with food stamps you try to make them stretch as far as you can and that means you buy the cheapest crap you can. In the header of this blog I make the distinction between being ignorant and being stupid, these people are ignorant, be it from cultural pressure or lack of education, most just don't know any better. On the other hand, the dietitian and the owners of this company are just buying into a paradigm that works for them financially, they are just stupid selfish and disrespectful. I am not saying that based solely on their food choices either, but thats another story. Besides, trying to teach the American Dietetics Association about Nutrition is like trying to teach someone from the AMA about the efficacy of Herbs! You might as well be talking to a stone wall.
  Unfortunately I need the Job right now as I have been out of work for almost a year, so I will have to make peace, at least for a little while, about being a part of the very thing I despise and have spent a good part of my life learning not to be a part of.