My Heaven Includes Bacon

I have been struggling to come up with a simple way to explain my change in diet. Basically I am a vegetarian for most of the week, and an omnivore on weekends. Why?

It’s not about religion, I am too afraid of picking the wrong denomination to ever choose just one. I can already imagine how ripped off I would feel if I lived my whole life by some strict code, to get turned away at the pearly gates (or equivalent) by a technicality! “You’re kicking me out for eating bacon?? Hey, my heaven includes bacon!”

While it is a great reason to reduce meat intake, the environment isn’t my reason. I am reducing intake of all animal proteins (including fish), not just the ones that chew up hectares of land and resources to produce.

It isn’t an ethical concern, since I can’t see where to draw the line on animals, insects or plants. Does the tasty cow deserve to live more than the yummy escargot? And we’ve all seen Avatar; how about plants??

So that leaves health, and yes that is the reason. I’ve read a fair bit of research that points to animal protein –not the common villain, fat– as the root cause of heart disease and many cancers. Completely eliminating meat is supposed to be the idea solution, but many health benefits can be gained by significantly reducing the intake to levels much lower than the typical North American diet.

Who Hasn’t Seen the ‘Last Lecture’?

Randy Pausch’s last lecture has come up in several recent conversations I have had, and I am always surprised to find people who haven’t seen it. I mean, the guy was on Oprah, everybody must have heard of this guy or his book by now!

We are coming up on the two year anniversary of Randy’s last public post to his blog (June 26th, 2008) before his death on July 25th 2008 of pancreatic cancer, so it might be a good time to remind the world (well my small world anyway) about his gift to the world: His Last Lecture.

If you still don’t know if you want to invest 70 minutes of your life on this, watch the 10-minute version that was on Oprah. But I challenge you to watch this, then not watch the 80 minute version; so pick… 80 minutes or 90 minutes.  ;)

Save This Buddha!

I am watching with anxiety the events unfolding in Bangkok, where anti-government protesters are conducting sit-ins, and constructing barricades around areas of interest to foreign tourists, as a means to get the government’s attention. Initially, this all seemed like a great example of Ghandi-style peaceful civil disobedience (like when the protesters ground the Bangkok airport to a halt in 2008), but then the bullets started flying, with an accompanying Twitter feed).

My visit to Bangkok was one of my best travel experiences, a positive culture-shock, and one of my favourite places to take photos.

While the safety of the MANY citizens of Bangkok (10M+) is of the paramount importance, it always frustrates me that there doesn’t seem to be any way for the international community to protect artifacts and architecture of such cultural significance. When trouble breaks out, these artifacts become targets, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes by accident.

About 6 months before before 9/11, there were some very clear signs that all was not right in the heads of those ruling Afghanistan. In an effort to erase Afghanistan’s true cultural heritage, the Taliban decided to blow up two giant Buddha statues carved into a cliff near Bamiyan, in defiance of international protests.

Unfortunately, historic sites are often the most sturdy things to hide behind.

In Chris Hedges’ book “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning” he indicates that this is a very common element of the prelude to any war; erasing the past to create a new fictitious present. It is particularly prominent in wars that result in ethnic cleansing, like the strife in the Balkan states.

I can’t offer any solutions, only raise awareness. Protecting items of cultural significance isn’t about saving tourism, it is about making sure the truth about the past isn’t eradicated just because it is inconvenient to the present (or it is the sturdiest thing to hide behind when the bullets start to fly).