Responsibility Peanuts

I just read a report about the peanut butter/paste salmonella outbreak at CNN's website. The wrap up bothered me, see if you feel the same way. For starters, here's the last few paragraphs, though you should feel free to click above or search their website for the whole thing:

... The outbreak highlights how food production has become more centralized, said Jaydee Hanson, a policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety. The peanuts come from a variety of farms, then are processed at a central location into ingredients disbursed for use in many products, he said.

"We should not have in the food system this level of contamination," Hanson said. "That's a failure of regulation."

The last inspection of the company was conducted by the state of Georgia in June, according to the FDA. Officials said some violations were found that were corrected by the company. No further information was provided.

"The food industry is really the responsible party for ensuring that the products that they produce are safe," Sundlof said.

"But it is not the responsibility of the consumer to make sure that the product that they receive is a safe product. That is the responsibility of the food industry and with the oversight of the Food and Drug Administration."

I agree with Dr. Stephen Sundlof, the director of the agency's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition that it is the responsibility of the food industry and the FDA to make sure food is safe. But that should not diminish the responsibility of the consumer. Ultimately it is the individual that decides to pick up food and put it in their mouth. That's where the buck really stops. Maybe if we realized our own role to maintain our health, the obesity epidemic would be a far more limited problem.

I like the informational campaigns for proper food preparation. I appreciate the testing the FDA does for known pathogens and contamination. Since I'm a wussy Libertarian, I don't mind this sort of government program (not that I don't think a private organization like a food Underwriters Laboratory wouldn't work better).

But, all that said, citizens of this country should not be considered children. This assumption that we need to be protected and taken care of percolates into the whole society. Our sense of self-responsibility diminishes so that when we are injured, or denied, or mistreated we react like children. It isn't our fault and we're going to throw a temper tantrum (by suing someone) and getting a candy (settlement) to make up for the injustice of societies neglect. We act like children, those we've given power to, treat us like children. And it repeats again.

There's my two-cents on that.

In defense of the article, I did admire the observation that the general population now knows what it's like to have a peanut allergy. It really is a pain in the ass to read all those labels. It has nothing to do with wanting attention or being picky. It's about health. On that note, I'll say I'm very happy we use soy butter at our house.

Anti-Abortion? Have You Thought It Through?

http://unreasonablefaith.com/2009/01/21/how-to-stump-anti-abortionists-with-one-question/

I'll start this post with a caveat that the video at this link and the text do not indicate how many people were asked the question, where the questioning of the anti-abortion demonstrations took place, or what published positions the anti-abortion organizations have taken if any.

I was struck by the fact that many of the people interviewed fell back on the excuse that they were not lawyers and therefore could not make a decision about punishment for the crime of murder. I agree with the video's authors that the same people would quickly be able to come up with acceptable punishments for a murder that is unrelated to abortion.

I don't understand why an anti-abortion activist would not have thought about all the ramifications especially upon women, but also on the family in general. It seems unconscionable to take away the right of a woman over her own body and have not thought about that.

We had our own bit of mental dissonance here in Colorado this last election, luckily the constitutional amendment didn't pass.

http://www.coloradoforequalrights.com/

Section 31. Person defined. As used in sections 3, 6, and 25 of Article
II of the state constitution, the terms "person" or "persons" shall include
any human being from the moment of fertilization.

An advocate being interviewed was asked about legal ramifications about this definition. She said that those could be worked out after the law was enacted. Either she hadn't thought about it and the definition was the only thing she cared about, or she had thought about it and didn't want to scare off potential voters.

I have these questions (among others):

1. How will the census deal with these 'persons'? Will other states accept our increased population and therefore increased representation in the House?
2. Is the following excerpt from Colorado Criminal Law acceptable to the general population had this law passed?

   If the defendant is convicted of knowing or reckless child abuse causing serious bodily injury or death, the court is required to sentence the defendant to the department of corrections for a term of at least the midpoint in the presumptive range (16 years) but not more than twice the maximum term authorized in the presumptive range for the punishment of that class felony. Probation is not an option.

3. Is a miscarriage involuntary manslaughter?
4. How are property and inheritance rights going to be managed?

And I'm sure you can come up with a whole host of others.

Battery Labels

I can't remember if these labels are for C or D batteries. In any case, they're mostly just supposed to be humorous. :)

Commentaries and Opinions

Well, it's been a year since I posted. I've decided to spend a bit more time on this particular blog. Originally, I wasn't planning on posting links because so many other sites contain atheism links. I realized though that perhaps my opinions about these sites and news stories might be worthwhile to write about. I'm so self-important.

I plan to start following more focused websites. I recently joined GodTube. Cureently, I've been pointed to religious and atheist stories by FARK, like this story, and from Reddit. The story that I found most striking in my recent readings was this one:

Vicar takes down crucifixion sculpture 'because it's a scary depiction of suffering'

I wondered if this reaction was unique to protestants, maybe to Britain or Europe perhaps extending over the pond to Canada. Americans of all stripes flocked to Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ. Granted, Gibson is a Catholic, a franchise that purposefully displays the an extremely violent view of the torture of Jesus.

Maybe our reaction was due to the rise of Fundamentalist Christians and the recent administration's 'born again' fervor. Has this overwhelmed the sensibilities of our nation? Has the extremist conservative Christians desensitized the general public to the implacable nature of their views? Is this akin to the studied desensitization of our society to violence due to television and video games? While decrying violence in our society, we revel in a moment of tribal religious blood letting. The moderate majority then return to the prevalent, sterile warm and fuzzy view of Jesus who sports locks rivaling Fabio and cuddles the lambs and small children.

Regardless of our peculiar and contradictory American sensibilities, I understood the main theme of Christianity to be that Jesus brought a revision of the Old Testament laws and served as a sacrificial lamb to seal the deal. (Talk about great material for future massive emotional blackmail.) So, if Jesus' death wasn't terrible, wouldn't the sacrifice have lost its potency? If Jesus had died in his sleep, had a heart attack, developed a fatal illness or some other natural and unremarkable death, wouldn't his teachings have lost a certain amount of punch? If he hadn't had a violent death at the hands of others, would he have actually been a sacrifice? Would it have been more horribly obvious that God had essentially orchestrated a suicide mission for his only son? Couldn't he have just delivered another set of tablets?

Don't Christians need to acknowledge the terribleness of Jesus' fate and the obligation it puts upon those who have received the benefits of God's new found mercy and forgiveness? Isn't this the foundation of their religion? Isn't this the celebration, that by living with humans and willingly dying at their hands demonstrate in stark and clear terms the total love of God for his creation, despite their cruelness? Isn't it a heresy to avoid the harsh bloody details to focus on gentle love personified (or animal-ified) by an egg delivering rabbit?

Of course, I'm an atheist. I personally think it's a primitive and horrible thing that a god would ask for sacrifices of animals or more terribly, children (Abraham offering Isaac, Jephthah killing his daughter as an offering to God, and then most horribly God of his own son). In Luke, Jesus talks of hatred and abandonment of family, of being a bringer of war, and his wish that those who doubt him should be killed. It's all appalling and immoral in my point of view, but then again, it's not my religion.

Why do Christians profess to believe in Jesus as the "Prince of Peace" prophesied and then ignore the contradiction -- Jesus lacks of the quality of peace of the promised Messiah. Is the Bible's message too frightening and uncomfortable in our state of enlightenment?

I really can't resolve these conflicts in my mind. I don't know how Christians do it. It doesn't make any sense to me -- unless these religious people craft their god into the shape of the tool they need to get by in life. He would be a personal god then, a god created by the believer. This god is made using a framework of the Bible, of pagan traditions (bunnies and decorated trees), other faiths' wisdom and of our society's own awareness and sensibilities of right and wrong. This personal god has the same name as everyone else's and subsets of the greater pool of knowledge. As a society, we can then politely ignore the fact that this is not one god. This is a pantheon of at least as many gods as there are people on the earth.