My Christmas break thusfar

After a grueling two days of taking five finals, I caught the red-eye home on Tuesday night. Since I had not slept in two days due to massive cramming, I figured I'd at least be able to get a little shut-eye on the plane. However, the long leg from SLC to Atlanta brought no respite for me; I spent the time reading a little Crime and Punishment and watching the best Christmas movie of all time (Love Actually). I got into Atlanta around 5 in the morning and found my terminal for the three-hour layover. I had been sitting in the chair for ten minutes when I passed out from exhaustion. I wake up at 7:52 freaking out because I thought my plane was gone. Luckily, it was delayed and they hadn't even started boarding yet. Geez. I slept for almost three hours sitting up in a chair.... who does that? Apparently I can do that. The plane ride home was uneventful.

Do you realize how hard it is to live with my family? All the cars in the driveway have "I love Mitt!" stickers. I am ashamed to stand outside for fear of being spotted. Not to mention I have to drive these cars around. I wear sunglasses and a hat for disguise. Not to mention my family is the biggest bunch of carnivores around... I have been pressured into eating meat a few times, but have yet to succumb. Whenever I feel the temptation, I just think of all those hormones and antibiotics pumped into that nasty chicken's body and then I feel confident enough in my convictions to abstain. Yuck.

My best friend Kaitlyn (KK) has hip surgery two weeks ago for a femural-acetabular impingement. Basically her acetabulum is too narrow/shallow for the head of her femur to fit in so they went in and shaved some of the bone and rebuilt the hip socket. Kind of like a hip replacement at the age of 20. She's in bed for another two weeks and incredibly bored, so I've gone over there since I've been back to keep her company. I don't mind though, because I love more than anything in the world sitting in that room and talking to her. She challenges me but listens to me, and I really respect her beliefs too. She is a deep thinker and doesn't just follow what everyone else says. I think she is truly amazing and we had some great conversations about God and religion yesterday. Next week, we are going on an hour-long outing to the genealogy library at our church building because she has recently been into finding things about her ancestors. Should be really good.

Lauren and Christopher, Megan and Gavin got here tonight around 7. I gave Megan a bath today and this is what she said:

Megan: One day, I am going to be a famous artist.
Me: Like Van Gogh?
Megan: VINCENT VAN GOGH. He painted the picture about the night.
Pretty impressive for a newly five-year-old.

Random thoughts

I am tired. I am bored. I am at work. I really like prunes. I think I like em better than Starbursts. The next 5 days just might do me in. I turned in my precis for my political philosophy class 10 minutes ago and that is just utter relief. I'm taking 6 finals in two days. Yippee.


Things I will do at home this Christmas:
Go to the zoo. Cook a ton. Visit KK with her gimp hip. Run. Make Mom do yoga with me. Watch the last four episodes of Heroes. Read my new book about feminism. Go to Harvest Hope and volunteer for a day. Go to the state museum. Go to the dentist and doctor for my mission check-ups. Drink some wassail. Go caroling. Bake zucchini bread and take it to people in the ward. Make vegan cookies with Megan. Go on a date with Ethan to Marble Slab (I will get the non-dairy sorbet, of course). Learn how to knit. Finish reading Luke. Buy running shoes. Go to that cool store Mom told me about with the African stuff. Replace my cell phone. Not think about alarm systems or Nietzsche. Sleep at least 6 hours a night to catch up for lost sleep all semester. Beat everyone in Rook with Christopher. Go to the temple.

Delicious soup

I made some pretty delicious soup last week and just thought I would share.
The flavor was incredible. I also added extra diced tomatoes because I love 'em.

LENTIL AND FIVE VEGETABLE STEW
(Serves 4)

A fat-free stew loaded with flavor.

1 large leek stalk, finely chopped
1 large carrot, shredded
2 cups water
1-1/2 cups canned crushed tomatoes
1 cup yellow corn kernels
1/2 cup broccoli
florets, lightly steamed
1 cup pre-cooked lentils
1 Tablespoon dried red pepper flakes
Salt and pepper to taste

In a stew pot, boil well-cleaned chopped leek and shredded carrot in water until tender. Drain well and add remaining ingredients. Cook until well heated.
You may want to add a bit of pre-cooked brown rice or your favorite herb seasoning.

Total Calories Per Serving: 168
Fat: 1 gram

FROM: vrg.org

Week in summary

This week in summary (thusfar):

1. HOT SPRINGS. Last night and they were glorious. I scrapped up my knees and toe pretty nasty on a rock, but all in all, a night not to be missed. Saw a few shooting stars that were incredible.
2. I've worked out everyday since last Tuesday and yesterday for two hours. Cholesterol, eat your heart out! (NOT MINE.)
3. Finals, finals, finals. Well not yet, but plenty of preparation.
4. We moved into a new building for work. It's closer and it's huge.
5. Snowstorm, nature dumped about 8 inches on us Saturday night.
6. Olive Garden for my birthday. The waiter didn't sing to me.
7. Austin came over for a sleepover after her date with Reid. I miss sharing a tiny little college bed with my best friend :(
8. I got the job for WomanStats! Woooohooo!
9. In less than one week, I'll be with my family! Yay!
10. Life is beyond fabulous. I love this time of year when everyone is super-stressed, because for some reason, finals never worry me; rather, they are just more of a huge inconvenience, just one more thing getting in the way of me going home for Christmas. Maybe this semester it will set in about Sunday evening...
11. My last paper for Pl Sc 200 is due today and it's practically finished already. Regression paper, how I love thee.
12. I'm exactly 21 years and 1 week old today.
13. I am going to be late to class because I'm posting on my blog.

This might be a little biased, but most of it makes sense...

But back to those top five reasons we hear for going vegan: There are very few choices in our day-to-day lives that make a significant impact on the world around us, but what we choose to eat does. Eating meat supports global poverty and worker abuse, harms the environment, supports cruelty to animals, and is bad for our health. Socrates said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Basically, veganism and vegetarianism are about leading an examined life—really considering the health, environmental, human, and animal consequences of our food choices, and then opting to make choices that are in keeping with our basic values.

So vegetarianism is the self-empowerment diet; at every meal, we have the opportunity to live our values—to cast our vote against cruelty to animals, environmental degradation, and global poverty—and we do this all while eating a diet that is better for us than one that includes meat.

Okay, first issue: health
Meat, eggs, and dairy products contain absolutely no fiber or complex carbohydrates, and they are packed with saturated fat and cholesterol. In the short term, eating meat, dairy products, and eggs is likely to make a person fat and lethargic. In the long term, eating these products can cause heart disease, high blood pressure, several types of cancer, and an array of other problems. I’d like to make a couple of points about human physiology, and then I’ll talk about the link between animal products and a few of the worst health scourges plaguing North Americans.

It’s amazing how many seemingly intelligent people, to justify their meat-eating, open their mouths, point at their teeth, and say something about “canines” as a means of defending a habit that is ecologically devastating, cruel to animals, and likely to kill them. Putting aside how different human “canines” are from the canine teeth of carnivores (I really wonder if these people have ever even looked at the long, dagger-like canines of a dog or a tiger), every natural carnivore has an array of other physiological properties that do not mirror ours. For example, unlike humans, all natural meat-eaters manufacture their own vitamin C, whereas we need to consume vitamin C in fruits and vegetables. True carnivores perspire through their tongues rather than through their skin. Natural meat-eaters have sharp, pointy front teeth, sharp and jagged molars, and a tooth-bone density that’s many times greater than that of humans, which enables them to crunch through the bones of their prey. Carnivores have no digestive enzymes in their saliva at all, and their digestive acids are many times more acidic than those of humans, so the bacteria from rotting flesh won’t kill them. Natural meat-eaters have jaws that move only vertically, instead of in a grinding motion as ours do, and they don’t chew their food—they just rip and swallow. Carnivores have claws to rip their prey apart instead of sensitive fingers for plucking. They have intestinal tracts that are only three times their body length, which enables them to eject rotting flesh quickly. No matter how much saturated fat and cholesterol they consume, natural meat-eaters never develop atherosclerosis, the heart disease that consistently kills more human beings in the industrialized world than any other cause of death. And the list of physiological differences between humans and natural meat-eaters goes on and on.

And let’s also think about this intuitively. How many of us salivate at the idea of chasing small animals, ripping them limb from limb, and then devouring them, blood and all? I hope that no one listening has that reaction, but every carnivore does. How many of us, if we’re walking down the street and see a recently run-over animal carcass on the road, think, “Mmmmmm ... I’d like to eat that!”? No. We think, “Oh, how sad” or “Blech.” A real carnivore, if hungry, digs in.

Yes, human beings learned, “Hey, if we kill all the bacteria and viruses with fire, this stuff probably won’t kill us.” And a long time ago, at times when there was little vegetation for us, we started eating meat. But it’s still not good for us, and in fact, it’s so bad for us that it kills many of us.

Every once in awhile, someone will tell me that their doctor suggested that they eat meat, or that their doctor says there’s no link between eating chicken and getting cancer. I suspect they’re making it up, since any doctor who said that would be offering advice that is contrary to every nutritional body in the world. There is not a single prominent medical or dietetic group that will tell you eating meat is good for you. On the pro-vegetarian side, we have an array of prominent medical groups and physicians, including Doctors Andrew Weil, Dean Ornish, Caldwell Esselstyn, T. Colin Campbell, Neal Barnard, and the list goes on. On the pro-meat side, there is literally one guy (seriously, just one)—Robert Atkins, who keeled over dead at 260 pounds in 2003, and whose company went bankrupt shortly thereafter.

The American Dietetic Association, the world’s largest organization of nutrition professionals, performed an extensive review of all the scientific studies about vegetarian diets. They found that vegetarians have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, and obesity than meat-eaters, and wrote a position paper on vegetarian and vegan diets which concludes that vegetarian and vegan diets are appropriate for all stages, including infancy and pregnancy, and that in fact they have, quote, “health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases,” unquote.

So on the side that says you should eat some meat, we have not one medical or dietetic group in the world, but one guy who dropped dead at more than 260 pounds (and he was under 6 feet tall, by the way). On the other side we have some of the most prominent doctors and nutritional researchers in the world, and all the scientific and medical bodies that exist. So if your friend says that her doctor told her to eat meat, if it’s true, she really needs to find another doctor.

I know that when I adopted a vegetarian diet, I found that I needed less sleep and less coffee, and I suddenly had more energy than I had ever had before; my 10K running time dropped by more than 15 percent, and I’d been running cross country for years. The reason is that I was working with my physiology rather than against it—not forcing my body to expend so much energy digesting foods that it was not designed to digest.

Vegetarianism is also the ultimate weight loss diet, since vegetarians are one-third as likely to be obese as meat-eaters are, and vegans are about one-tenth as likely to be obese. You can be an overweight vegan, of course, and you can be a skinny meat-eater. But on average, vegans are 10 to 20 percent lighter than meat-eaters. Anyone who has questions about this might want to read Dr. Neal Barnard’s Food for Life or Dr. Dean Ornish’s Eat More, Weigh Less. Of course, we also have more information on our Web site, www.GoVeg.com.

Beyond the short-term benefits of vegeteranism and veganism—energy, weight control, and the like, America’s two biggest killers—heart disease and cancer—are inextricably linked to meat consumption.

Let’s touch on heart disease first. Heart disease kills more people in North America than does any other cause of death. Up until the 1980s, it was assumed that as people get older, their arteries inevitably become clogged. If you didn’t get hit by a bus or die of cancer or something else, your arteries would eventually close, causing either your brain or your heart to give out, and that would be it. Enter Doctors Dean Ornish and Caldwell Esselstyn, two doctors with 100 percent success in preventing and reversing heart disease, using a vegan diet. If you know someone who has had a heart attack or suffers from heart problems, please stop listening right now and buy them Dr. Esselstyn’s book, Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease, which details his work at the top heart clinic in the world, The Cleveland Clinic. He details both the skepticism of his colleagues, and also his 100 percent success taking people with advanced stages of heart disease, people who were told by their cardiologists that they were going to die, and stopping the disease in its tracks. The book will change their life—I promise.

The average vegan cholesterol level is about 133, while the average vegetarian cholesterol level is 161. And the average meat-eater’s cholesterol level is 210. Although the medical establishment may say, “Well, you’ve done your best,” at 210, people are still dying in droves. As Dr. Charles Attwood pointed out, this is insane: If people were being run down by trucks at the same rate that they’re dying from heart attacks induced by meat, eggs, and dairy products, drastic steps would be taken.

And the same is true of cancer. There is complete scientific unanimity: As many cases of cancer are caused by diet as are caused by smoking. And it is also completely clear how we can prevent cancer. The World Cancer Research Fund, the American Cancer Society, and the Royal Cancer Society in Britain—and essentially, all organizations that study the issue—agree that as many cases of cancer are caused by diet as are caused by smoking, and all of them make the same top two recommendations for preventing cancer: Eat more plant-based foods, and eat fewer animal-based foods. In other words, “Go vegan.”

But what about milk? The fact that the dairy industry has succeeded in selling people on this nonsense—that cow’s milk is good for them—is truly remarkable and a tribute to the power of money and advertising. What could be less natural than one species’ decision to consume the mammary secretions of another species? It’s not as if nature made a mistake—“Let’s see, dog mothers’ milk for puppies, kangaroo mothers’ milk for joeys, rat mothers’ milk for baby rats, cow mothers’ milk for calves … oh, hey, wait a minute! Let’s feed cow mammary secretions to human beings also, including grown-up ones, who shouldn’t be drinking any mothers’ milk at their age anyway.” Of course not.

Finally, because many people care more about quality of life than about longevity, let’s look at sex. Vegans tend to be much lighter than ovo-lacto vegetarians and meat-eaters, and they tend to have more energy, need less sleep, and so on. Clearly, these aspects of veganism can be good for a person’s sex life. But clogged arteries will block the blood flow to your extremities before they cut off the blood flow to your heart and kill you. This results in poor circulation and, for guys, impotence. And while we’re on the subject, it’s worth noting that many cholesterol-cutting drugs have, as one of their side effects, reduced sexual desire and potency. So toss out the Viagra, gentlemen; a vegan diet is natural Viagra.

All this analysis applies to fish flesh as well as to other animal products: Fish flesh also has no fiber or complex carbohydrates. Most frighteningly, fish are also frequently laden with heavy metals or other contaminants from the water in which they swim. We’ve all heard the warnings about high mercury levels in fish and how pregnant women shouldn’t consume fish; well, if it’s not good for pregnant women, it can’t be good for anyone else either. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal ran a front page story about a kid who went from being an honor student and star athlete to being in remedial classes and unable to catch a ball, purely from eating a can of tuna a day. In 2006, the Chicago Tribune did a three-part front page story titled Mercury Menace, all about the fact that eating fish is linked to both short term health problems like forgetfulness and vertigo, and more serious problems like birth defects, cancer, and so on. You can read these stories on our Web site, www.FishingHurts.com. Suffice it to say, fish is probably the most dangerous so-called food you can eat, as we document on the site.

And of course, all this discussion has been about animal products when they’re at their best. That is, these are problems inherent in the consumption of meat, including organic meat. But most animal products are also full of antibiotics, dioxins, and foodborne pathogens like E. coli, salmonella, and campylobacter. Millions of people get sick each year from eating contaminated meat, especially the flesh of chickens and sea animals, and thousands die. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), consumers of meat and dairy products are taking in 22 times the acceptable level of dioxins in their food. Ninety-five percent of dioxin exposure comes from consuming meat, eggs, and dairy products. The other 5 percent is environmental; virtually none comes from consuming vegan foods.

Of course, this also all applies for kids, in spades. Kids’ bodies are developing, so you really don’t want them eating meat, dairy, and eggs. And check out another benefit of raising your child as a vegetarian. A BBC story in December 2006 explained a British Medical Journal study that, quote, “found [children] who were vegetarian by 30 had recorded five IQ points more on average at the age of 10. Researchers said it could explain why people with higher IQ were healthier as a vegetarian diet was linked to lower heart disease and obesity rates,” unquote. These studies are backed up by the grandfather of child care, Dr. Benjamin Spock, who wrote, quote, “Children who grow up getting their nutrition from plant foods rather than meats have a tremendous health advantage. They are less likely to develop weight problems, diabetes, high blood pressure, and some forms of cancer,” unquote.

If you care about your health, if you want to live with as much vigor as possible, look as good as possible, and do as much good as possible, it would be wise to move toward adopting a vegetarian diet.

Issue number two: The environment.
The second reason for adopting a vegetarian diet is the environment. This one can be explained intuitively also. For example, a 200-pound man will burn off at least 2,000 calories a day even if he never gets out of bed. He uses most of what he consumes simply to power his body. Similarly, most of what we feed to chickens, pigs, and other farmed animals—most of it is burned off, simply keeping the animal alive until they’re slaughtered.

It’s bizarre, really: You take a crop like soybeans, oats, corn, or wheat, which are all high in protein, fiber, and complex carbohydrates but devoid of cholesterol and artery-clogging saturated fat. You feed them to an animal and create a product with no fiber or complex carbohydrates at all but with lots of cholesterol and saturated fat. It makes about as much sense as taking pure water, running it through a sewer system, and then drinking it.

In November of 2006, the United Nations released a massive report that details the environmental consequences of eating meat. It’s called Livestock’s Long Shadow, and it concludes that raising chickens, pigs, and other animals for food is, quote, “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.” Yes, no matter what environmental issue what issue you’re looking at, from resource use to water pollution to air pollution to global warming—funneling crops through animals in order to eat meat is one of the top three causes.

E, the respected environmental magazine, noted that more than one-third of all fossil fuels produced in the United States are used to raise animals for food. It takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of animal flesh. If we have to grow massive amounts of grain and soy—with all the tilling, irrigation, crop dusters, and so on that are required—truck all that grain and soybeans to factory-style farms and feedlots, feed it to the approximately 10 billion land animals who are raised for food in the U.S. each year, truck those animals to automated slaughter facilities, truck the dead animals to processing centers, run the processing and packaging machines, and then truck the packaged meat to grocery stores—well, there’s a lot of energy being used up at each one of those stages.

If all this energy is being used, all these fossil fuels are being burned, and all this manure is being produced, of course, we’re talking about serious air pollution. Many environmentalists would sooner walk or ride their bikes than drive in order to decrease air pollution in their area but then will happily eat meat, eggs, or dairy products without a second thought about the fact that they are paying for gas-guzzling animal-transport trucks, refrigerated meat trucks, pollution-churning processing plants, and so on.

My wife says that where the environment is concerned, eating meat is like driving a huge SUV or an 18-wheeler. Eating a vegetarian diet is like driving a motorcycle, and eating a vegan diet is like riding a bicycle or walking.

A similar analogy holds for land. According to John Robbins, the average vegan uses about one-sixth of an acre of land to satisfy his or her food requirements for a year; the average vegetarian who consumes dairy products and eggs requires about three times as much, and the average meat-eater requires about 20 times that much land. We can grow a lot more food on a given parcel of land if we’re not funneling crops through animals.

And think about water. According to the National Audubon Society, raising animals for food requires about as much water as all other water uses combined, even as many areas are experiencing drought conditions. It requires about 300 gallons of water to feed a vegan for a day. It requires about four times as much water to feed a vegetarian and 14 times as much to feed a meat-eater. Of course, if you have to feed animals, you have to irrigate the crops that you’re feeding them. You have to give them water. Factory farms and slaughterhouses have to be hosed down with water. It’s a water-intensive operation.

Raising animals for food is also a water-polluting process. One dairy cow produces more than 100 pounds of excrement per day. According to a U.S. Senate report, animals raised for food in the U.S. produce 130 times the excrement of the entire human population of this country. Their excrement is more concentrated than human excrement and is often contaminated with herbicides, pesticides, toxic chemicals, hormones, antibiotics, and so on. These massive farmed-animal factories generally don’t have waste-treatment plants. Instead, the manure is poured onto land or into giant lagoons, where it often spills over into local waterways, kills fish, and poisons the drinking water. Streams and rivers all over the middle of our country that once were clear and full of fish are now filthy and lifeless because of manure runoff from factory farms. There’s an enormous “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico now, where no fish or other animals live. This is largely because of the enormous amount of animal waste that has flowed from factory farms down rivers and streams and into the gulf.

Two of the most pressing environmental issues of the day are global warming and the destruction of the rain forest. In 2006, the University of Chicago published a major report stating that adopting a vegan diet is more important in the fight against global warming than switching to a hybrid car. That makes sense when you consider how many more resources are required to grow all those crops for chickens, pigs, and other animals.

As for the rain forest, most people know that the rain forest is being destroyed to create grazing space for cattle. But Greenpeace published a report in 2006 indicating that the new trend is for huge companies to clear rain-forest land to raise crops to feed to farmed animals. It specifically blamed the chicken industry for leading the way in the destruction of the Amazon, and it unveiled a banner in the Amazon that read, “KFC: Amazon Criminal,” because that companies chickens were fed from soy grown in the rain forest.

Of course, anyone who reads the papers knows what factory-fishing trawlers are doing to our sea beds and ocean floors. One super-trawler is the length of a football field and takes in 800,000 pounds of fish in a single netting. Trawlers scrape along the ocean floor, destroying coral reefs and everything else in their way, and hydraulic dredges scoop up huge chunks of the ocean floor to sift out scallops, clams, and oysters. Most of what the fishing fleets get isn’t even eaten by human beings. Half is fed to animals who are raised for food, and about 30 million tons each year are just tossed back into the ocean, dead, which greatly disturbs the natural biological balance. Commercial fishing fleets are destroying sensitive aquatic ecosystems at a rate that is beyond comprehension. A major study found that in just the last 50 years, commercial fishing has reduced the populations of all large fish species by a staggering 90 percent.

Then there is aquaculture, which is increasing at a rate of more than 10 percent annually. Aquaculture is even worse than commercial fishing, because, for starters, it takes up to 5 pounds of wild-caught fish to reap 1 pound of farmed fish. Farmed fish eat fish caught by commercial trawlers that aren’t used for human consumption. Farmed fish are often raised in the same water that wild fish swim in, but fish farmers dump antibiotics into the water and use genetic breeding to create unnaturally large fish. The antibiotics contaminate the oceans and seas, and the genetically altered fish sometimes escape and breed with wild fish, throwing delicate aquatic balances out of kilter. Researchers at the University of Stockholm demonstrated that the horrible environmental influence of fish farms can extend to an area 50,000 times larger than the farm itself.

The choice is clear: We can demonstrate our environmental values every time we sit down to eat by eating a vegan meal, or we can trample over the Earth in a Hummer by eating meat, dairy products, and eggs. Really, a true environmentalist doesn’t eat animal products.

Issue Three: Human Rights
The third reason for adopting a vegetarian diet is human rights. Right now, 1.3 billion people, more than 20 percent of the world’s population, are living in abject poverty. Right now, 800 million people are suffering from what the United Nations calls “nutritional deficiency.” That’s a euphemism: They’re starving. Every year, 40 million people die from starvation-related causes.

It is depressing to consider that throughout the last big famine in Ethiopia, that country was exporting desperately needed soy and linseed to Europe to feed to farmed animals. The same relationship held true throughout the famine in Somalia in the early 1990s.

And the same relationship holds true between Latin America and the United States today. For example, two-thirds of the agriculturally productive land in Central America is devoted to raising farmed animals, almost all of whom are exported or eaten by the wealthy few in these countries.

The U.N. Commission on Nutritional Challenges for the 21 st Century said that unless we make major changes, 1 billion children will be permanently handicapped over the next 20 years as a result of inadequate caloric intake. The first step toward averting this tragedy, according to the commission, is to encourage human consumption of traditional plant foods, like beans, nuts, grains, fruits, and vegetables. So the question is: Why are we funneling huge amounts of grain, soybeans, and corn through all the animals we use for food, even as so many people on the planet starve? Why do we eat animal products that make us fat when we could choose a vegetarian diet instead and help feed the world’s hungry?

On the domestic front, a book called Fast Food Nation came out a few years ago. In the book, investigative journalist Eric Schlosser details the human abuse in slaughterhouses and includes the information that slaughterhouse workers have nine times the injury rate of coal miners in Appalachia, that some slaughterhouses have 300 percent turnover rates, and that many slaughterhouses reserve the worst jobs for people who are in this country illegally and thus can’t defend their own rights.

And in 2005, the organization Human Rights Watch issued a report that found that, quote, “Meatpacking is the most dangerous factory job in America. . . . Nearly every worker interviewed for this report bore physical signs of a serious injury suffered from working in a meat or poultry plant. . . . Every country has its horrors, and this industry is one of the horrors in the United States.” Workers in slaughterhouses are constantly exposed to knives, kicking by large animals as they hang upside-down on conveyor belts, extreme temperatures, and animals’ bodily fluids.

The truth is that eating meat, eggs, and dairy products supports an industry that abuses both workers and animals and wastes enormous amounts of food that should be fed to the world’s starving people.

Fourth Animal Welfare
The fourth reason for adopting a vegetarian diet is that eating animal products supports cruelty to animals. If we don’t want to pay people to inflict gratuitous abuse on animals, a vegan diet is the only diet that makes sense.

Twenty years ago, some scientists were still telling us that other animals don’t feel pain in the same way that humans do. Now, no reputable scientist believes that. Everyone now understands that cattle, pigs, chickens, and fish feel pain in the same way, and to the same degree, as humans. We also know that they have emotions, and even though we don’t tend to know chickens in the same way that we know cats and dogs, the science is clear: Chickens, fish, pigs, and cattle are individuals, just like the animals we know a bit better.

In fact, both pigs and chickens do better on cognition tests than dogs or cats, and pigs perform better than 3-year-old human children. When Cameron Diaz learned that pigs are more intelligent than three-year-old children, she decided to stop eating them, exclaiming, “Oh, my God, it’s like eating my niece.”

Scientists at the University of Guelph have learned that pigs and chickens can figure out how to turn on the heat in a cold barn if given the chance and turn it off again when they are too warm. University of Bristol researchers have observed that chickens will complete a difficult maze to reach a nest instead of laying their eggs on the barn floor. In Pennsylvania, a farm welfare researcher has shown that sows like to play video games and that they play the games better than some primates. And a researcher in Saskatchewan is studying the complex social lives of cattle, finding that they interact in ways that are very similar to how we interact. And don’t even get me started on fish—fish can use tools, learn from each other, and recognize one another, and they have long-term memories. These scientists join sanctuary owners and many small farmers in recognizing that animals are individuals, with feelings just like our own. You can watch videos of pigs playing video games and chickens navigating mazes in the education section of PETATV.com, and read more about all these amazing animals in the “Amazing Animals” section of GoVeg.com.

Science and understanding may have progressed, but the treatment of animals in factory farms has gotten worse. As Sen. Robert Byrd told the U.S. Senate, “Our inhumane treatment of livestock is becoming widespread and more and more barbaric.” He went on to detail the suffering of pigs in tiny stalls, hens in cages, calves in crates, and the inhumane—and inhuman—slaughter of all these animals. Sen. Byrd stated, “These creatures feel; they know pain. They suffer pain just as we humans suffer pain.”

PETA’s short Meat Your Meat video, which you can watch at www.Meat.org, shows you what you’re supporting if you consume meat, eggs, and dairy products. Every practice shown on the video is standard across the animal agriculture industry. Please download the video, make more copies for everyone who you think might do well to watch it, and encourage them to do likewise.

Factory farms are abusing animals—they are treating animals in ways that would warrant felony cruelty charges if the animals were dogs or cats. Animals are deprived of everything that is natural and important to them; their entire lives, from birth to death, are characterized by unmitigated misery. Alice Walker has a phrase for eating animal products: She calls it “eating misery.”

In the rush for profits, abnormal breeding practices are used so that animals will grow far more quickly than they would naturally, and their organs and limbs simply can’t keep up. For example, chickens’ upper bodies grow seven times as quickly as they did just 30 years ago, and their lungs, hearts, and limbs can’t keep up, so these factory-farmed animals who live for fewer than two months still suffer from very high rates of lung collapse, heart failure, and crippling leg deformities.

Chickens and turkeys are naturally inquisitive and would normally spend their lives actively dust- and sun-bathing, digging in the underbrush, building nests, playing with their chicks, and so on. Walk into a factory shed today, containing tens of thousands of chickens, and you’ll find that after just a month, the animals have become so debilitated that they can barely move.

Michael Specter, a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, visited a chicken farm and wrote, quote, “I was almost knocked to the ground by the overpowering smell of feces and ammonia. My eyes burned and so did my lungs, and I could neither see nor breathe…. There must have been 30,000 chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me. They didn’t move, didn’t cluck. They were almost like statues of chickens, living in nearly total darkness, and they would spend every minute of their six-week lives that way.”

Similar conditions exist for all animals raised for food: Cattle and pigs have their testicles ripped out without any painkillers. Cattle have their horns cut off and have third-degree burns—also known as branding—inflicted on them, often three or four times during their short lives. Pigs have their ears, tails, and teeth mutilated. Laying hens’ sensitive beaks are seared off with a hot blade. The animals are dosed with hormones or antibiotics, both to make them grow more quickly and to keep them alive through the horrible conditions that would kill them from stress and disease if they were not drugged. Mother pigs, or “breeding sows,” as the industry calls them, are kept in metal and cement “gestation crates,” cages so small that they can’t take a single step forward or backward. They are confined to cages like this continually for four to five years before being killed. One pig-flesh industry journal summed it up: “Crowding Pigs Pays.”

Animals are shipped to slaughter without any food or water, often through severe weather extremes. Conditions are so bad that some animals arrive at the slaughterhouse crippled or dead. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), more than 200,000 cattle per year—mostly dairy cows—arrive at slaughterhouses unable to walk off the backs of transport trucks. According to the National Pork Board, more than one million pigs arrive dead or crippled from the harsh traveling conditions. Imagine how bad the conditions must be for so many animals to become injured and killed. But the meat industry accepts that some animals won’t make it to slaughter if it means that it can make a higher profit. It’s cheaper to let some pigs die in transport than to buy more trucks and give animals more space and better conditions. One industry expert explained the cold-hearted calculation used by the egg industry when it crams so many hens into tiny wire cages—causing many to die—by stating that “chickens are cheap, cages are expensive.”

The animals who survive transport invariably suffer an awful death. Slaughterhouse workers and veterinarians testify that animals are routinely conscious through the entire slaughter process—while they are still conscious, their throats are slit, their limbs are hacked off, and their skin is torn from their bodies. Pigs are routinely forced into tanks of scalding-hot water for hair removal while they are still conscious. Chickens are often scalded to death in defeathering tanks.

This is an inevitable result of the fact that slaughter lines move at a pace that is too rushed for slaughterhouse workers to keep up with. Pig slaughter lines in the U.S. move at a rate of 1,100 animals per hour. Cow slaughter lines move at a rate of 400 animals per hour. In the European Union, the maximum rate is 300 for pigs and 75 for cows. U.S. lines move three to six times as quickly as European lines. Obviously, many animals will still be conscious as their throats are slit and their limbs are hacked off.

Sometimes people ask about dairy products, since the animal abuse in the dairy industry isn’t as obvious. It may surprise you to hear that animal abuse in dairy production is worse than that in most other animal-product industries. Cows give milk for the same reason that all animals do—to feed their babies. But their babies are taken away from them within 24 hours of birth, and the female babies are added to the dairy herds. Many of the males are raised for veal. You might say that there is a hunk of veal in every glass of milk.

But that’s not all: Not only do people who consume dairy products support the veal industry, they also support the abuse of dairy cows. Most dairy cows spend their entire lives on concrete or standing in muddy feedlots, and they often become lame as a result. And dairy cows now give about four times as much milk as they did just 25 years ago. Imagine if a human mother gave four times her normal milk output. The animals’ udders are so overloaded that they sometimes drag on the ground, and one-half of all dairy cows suffer from mastitis, a painful udder infection.

The worst industry regarding animal welfare is the egg industry. Hens are crammed into tiny cages that are stacked on top of each other. The birds can’t even spread a single wing in these cages for their entire lives. To keep the birds from pecking at each other in the cages, the egg industry cuts off the tips of birds’ sensitive beaks. After two horrific years, the birds who have survived are yanked out of the crates, trucked to a slaughterhouse, and slammed upside-down into shackles to have their throats slit. Their bodies are too beaten up to be sold as regular chicken flesh; they are turned into pet food or chicken soup instead. And have you ever wondered what happens to male chicks on egg factory farms? They don’t lay eggs, and they are too small to be used for meat, so they are generally tossed into a high-speed grinder while still completely conscious.

One of the most incredible facts about the animal abuse that I’ve just discussed is that it’s all routine. It’s inspired by profit, and it’s standard agricultural practice. The industry will tell us that only happy animals gain weight and produce, but that’s nonsense that can’t be backed up by science: The science proves that stressed animals eat more and thus grow faster. Animals unable to move grow more quickly than animals who can move around. Mutilating animals and dosing them with hormones and antibiotics allows them to live through conditions that would otherwise cause them to kill each other from stress or get sick and die. And cramming animals into transport trucks, even though it kills a lot of them, is more economically viable than using more trucks and giving animals more space. Once the animals are at the slaughterhouse, the low-wage, high-turnover workers are forced to kill at such a rapid pace that animal welfare is entirely out of the question. Profit is king; animal welfare is not a concern.

What about fish? As we discussed earlier, fish may not scream out in pain, but they feel pain every bit as much as mammals and birds do. This is a physiological fact, and it’s not disputed in scientific circles. Although we may have trouble empathizing with fish, their method of sonic communication, their sense of smell, and their ability to navigate all put human beings to shame. A few years back the scientific journal Fish and Fisheries that was devoted to learning cited more than 500 research papers on fish intelligence, proving that fish are smart, that they can use tools, and that they have impressive long-term memories and sophisticated social structures. Dr. Sylvia Earle, one of the world's leading marine biologists, said, "I never eat anyone I know personally. I wouldn't deliberately eat a grouper any more than I'd eat a cocker spaniel. They're so good-natured, so curious. You know, fish are sensitive, they have personalities, they hurt when they're wounded."

Regardless of who’s bringing in the catch, the methods of raising and killing fish are undeniably abusive. Commercial fishing trawlers, as I’ve mentioned, can net 800,000 pounds of fish; the fish are killed by crushing or by decompression as they are dragged from the ocean. Think about death by decompression or crushing. Have you ever felt claustrophobic in a crowd of people on a subway train or at a concert? Imagine how it would feel to be killed by being crushed. Or decompression—it’s like stepping on the moon without a spacesuit. When fish experience decompression, their swimbladders often rupture and their eyes pop out of their heads.

Aquaculture is even worse, and it accounts for almost half the fish consumed by human beings. Aquaculture involves cramming thousands of fish into tubs or confining them to enclosed areas of the sea or ocean surrounded by nets, giving each animal just a bit more room than the space taken up by his or her body. An aquaculture tank looks somewhat like a massive tin of writhing anchovies; you can’t believe that there are fish in there, and you have to wonder how a single animal could survive. The answer is that they’re drugged with antibiotics, but the death toll is still massive. And as I mentioned, producing 1 pound of farmed fish requires up to 5 pounds of wild-caught fish.

Make no mistake: If someone eats meat, eggs, or dairy products, that person is contributing to serious cruelty to animals, no matter how good of a person he or she is otherwise. And it’s cruelty to animals that, if done to a dog or a cat, would warrant felony animal abuse charges against everyone involved. This isn’t a comfortable thing to deal with, I know, but it is the truth. And how can we turn our backs on it once we know this?


Question 1: Animals eat one another in nature, so why shouldn’t we eat animals?

Variations on this question include, “Aren’t humans at the top of the food chain?” and “Aren’t humans omnivores?” Please really think about what we do to animals on factory farms and in slaughterhouses, denying animals everything that is natural to them and then killing them in gruesome ways, and try to tell me that this is moral. Nature’s law is, without a doubt, Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.” But some animals may procreate by rape and other animals may fight territorial battles to the death. But the fact that those things occur in nature does not mean we say they’re acceptable for humans. We hold ourselves to a higher standard in our interactions with one another. We even hold ourselves to a higher standard with regard to animals we often form special bonds with, such as dogs and cats—readily granting them some basic protections. What animal welfare advocates suggest is that we should be compassionate toward all animals, not just those who we know a bit better.

Question 2: Do you care more about animals than humans?

Variations on this question include, “With so much human suffering, why don’t you focus on human issues?” The interesting thing to me about this question is that none of my friends who run shelters or soup kitchens or who work on famine relief ever asks it. The people who ask this question invariably have not dedicated their lives to alleviating suffering—human or animal. And, of course, a vegan diet is the only environmentally responsible diet, it’s the healthiest diet, and it’s the diet that is the best for U.S. workers and the global poor. So a vegan diet is good for both animal and humans. Regardless, shouldn’t all suffering be addressed? Princeton bioethicist Dr. Peter Singer said: “When nonvegetarians say that ‘human problems come first,’ I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for human beings that compels them to continue to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farmed animals.” One great thing about veganism is that it allows you to take a stand against suffering without doing anything that requires any real time or effort.

Question 3: Didn’t God give us dominion over animals?

As a Roman Catholic, this is the one question that most unsettles me, because it is such an obscene rationalization. Dominion doesn’t mean domination and exploitation. All of the world’s prominent religions teach the importance of compassion, the importance of mercy. But the choice to eat meat, dairy products, or eggs is a violent one; it supports cruelty. Even if their religious beliefs allowed people to eat these products, they would certainly not be required to do so. Leaving aside the environmental and human consequences, which should be anathema to any kind or ethical human being, God created animals with needs, wants, desires, and species-specific behaviors, and all of these things are denied the animals who are turned into food by the farmed-animal industries. God created animals with a well-developed capacity for pain. Chicken, pigs, cattle, fish and other farmed animals—they are individuals. If you get to know a chicken or another farmed animal you find that they have personalities, intelligence, and social structures. They love their families. The Bible talks repeatedly about a hen’s love for her children, and that’s the metaphor Jesus uses to describe his love for humanity. Anyone who has ever seen a hen with her children or protecting her nest, knows this to be true. Farmed animal industries abuse animals and deny them the expression of each and every natural behavior God created for them. For more information on this topic, please check out JesusVeg.com.

Question 4: Why are you imposing your will on me?

This is sometimes put as, “You choose to be a vegan. I choose to be a meat-eater. Live and let live.” The problem here is that meat and dairy consumers are supporting the gratuitous abuse of an animal who had no choice in the matter. They are not putting into practice a “live and let live” philosophy. Just as child abuse involves the child who has no choice, eating meat, dairy, or egg products involves an animal, or many animals, who have had no choice. And just as you can choose to beat your child, you can choose to eat meat. But if you do, you’re hurting someone who is powerless to stop you.

Question 5: Don’t plants feel pain?

Pain requires a brain, a central nervous system, pain receptors, and so on. All mammals, birds, and fish have these things. No plants do. Really though, we all know this to be true: We all understand that there is a fundamental difference between cutting your lawn and lighting a cat’s tail on fire and between breaking up a head of lettuce and bashing a dog’s head in. Birds, mammals, and fish are made of flesh, bones, and fat, just as we are. They feel pain, just as we do. I may not know quite where to draw the line. For example, I’m not sure what a roach or an ant experiences. But I do know with 100 percent certainty that intentionally inflicting suffering because of tradition, custom, convenience, or a palate preference is unethical. And if we’re eating meat, dairy products, or eggs, we’re intentionally causing suffering, for no good reason.

Question 6: Aren’t vegans deficient in protein, calcium, or other nutrients?

The American Dietetic Association and the World Health Organization, among other groups, point out that vegan diets provide everything we need and that, in fact, they cut out a lot of the stuff that’s horrible for us, making vegans healthier. The diseases that are killing us are not deficiency diseases. We’re dying from heart disease, cancer, and stroke. We’re plagued with diabetes and obesity. You can be an unhealthful vegan, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to be an unhealthful consumer of meat, dairy products, and/or eggs. Dr. T. Colin Campbell argues that animal products are like tobacco—a little bit probably won’t hurt you, but why risk it? They’re bad for you. Of course, you can be a vegan, technically, and do nothing but drink soda and eat French fries. One should make an effort to eat a variety of foods and to be as healthful as possible.


Question 8: What do you think is the strongest argument for veganism? How do you convince someone who does not want to be convinced?

I suppose that it boils down to Socrates’ adage from 2,600 years ago: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” It seems to me that what it means to be a person of integrity is that I try to ask questions, that I try not to support things that I oppose, and that I try to make my life mean something. So for example, I could take part in every aspect of getting vegan foods to the table—picking them, trucking them to the plant to turn them into bread or whatever, and so on.

I like what Whole Foods CEO John Mackey says about his veganism. It’s very simple he says: I don’t need meat to survive. I know that eating meat causes animals to suffer, so I’m not going to eat them.

I think that ethics must include living a life that is, as much as possible, in keeping with our basic values. We can’t be perfect, but we really should all do as much as we can.

It’s worth considering, why do people eat animal products? It’s for some inconsequential reason, such as convenience, tradition, or taste, and because they can. No one argues that the animals want to be raised this way, transported this way, killed this way. Most people understand how gruesomely violent slaughterhouses are. But they don’t want to bother making the change, even though it’s easier than ever. They eat animals because they can. Well, that moral paradigm is no more justifiable when applied to animals than when applied to people. In fact, Isaac Bashevis Singer held that speciesism—bias on the basis of species—is the epitome of this “might makes right” moral paradigm.

Look how far the animal rights movement has come in, historically, the blink of an eye. In just the past 20 years, science has shown that a vegetarian diet is the healthiest diet and environmental researchers have proved that eating meat, dairy products, and eggs is not sustainable. Even more importantly, the scientific view that animals don’t feel emotion has been replaced by a new, belated understanding that, of course, they do. In just the past few years, the issue of animal treatment in factory farms has taken center stage, with members of the U.S. Congress decrying slaughterhouse treatment of animals and fast-food giants requiring improvements for animals.

Note that just 20 years ago, the vegetarian stereotype was of hippies in communes, finding good vegetarian food in a restaurant was rare, and most people didn’t know anyone who was a vegetarian. Now, the ranks of vegetarians include everyone from uber-celebrities Sir Paul McCartney and Pamela Anderson to Apple and Ford CEOs Steve Jobs and Bill Ford. Many of the leading national restaurant chains—like Johnny Rockets, Burger King, Chili’s, and Ruby Tuesday—sell great-tasting veggie burgers, and The Washington Post and The New York Times regularly run front-page stories about factory-farming abuses.

Every grocery store now has a section of frozen mock meats and other vegetarian convenience foods, such as Boca’s “Chik’n” patties, Gardenburger “Riblets,” and Morningstar Farms’ “Chik’n” and “Steak” strips, and a recent poll by food-service giant Aramark found that nearly one-quarter of college students want vegan options available at every meal. Millions and millions of people are learning that moral integrity requires that when we sit down to eat, we make conscious choices, rather than unconscious ones, and that the only diet for environmentalists, animal lovers, and people who care about their health is a vegetarian one. The animal rights movement is making rapid progress, but we have a long way to go, and we need your help. The best ways that you can help are by taking a moral stand and adopting a vegetarian diet and by encouraging your friends and family members to do the same.


The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that one of the great tragedies of history is that so many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. I’m convinced that we’re in one of those periods.



And here's the man that wrote it:
Bruce Friedrich is vice-president in charge of international grassroots campaigns for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world’s largest animal rights organization, with more than 1.6 million members and supporters. Before joining PETA more than 10 years ago, Bruce spent six years running a shelter for homeless families and the largest soup kitchen in Washington, D.C., as well as leading demonstrations on behalf of unions, a living wage, and other causes. He has been a progressive activist for more than 20 years.

My celebrity crush

Even more reason to love Milo.



Mmmmmm.

SOUP

This looks incredible. It would go perfectly with my new soup fetish. I love soup and eat it almost everyday. It's perfect for the cold weather, filling, easy to make, inexpensive, and healthy. I made a great Lentil and 5 Vegetable soup the other day- I'll post a picture and recipe soon.

My birthday cont'd

Today was rather anti-climatic. I had a reasonably good birthday though, lots of messages and phone calls and exciting presents.

For instance, the present my roommates Becca and Katy got me. I got home from work and on the table was kale, beets, lentils, and a Soy! Soy! Soy! cookbook. They know me too well, what more could I have asked for?? They also bought me a bottle of Martinelli's with the little fact that my day of birth coincides with the day prohibition was repealed. Even more reason to "drink" on my 21st. I gulped down some of the drink before hitting the sack shortly after.

Other than that, nothing terribly exciting happened today. During my IR class, Dr. Hudson "randomly" chose 3 students from the class to have a little debate on their viewpoints toward the U.S. interventions (or lack thereof) in Desert Storm, Bosnia/Kosovo, Rwanda, and Iraq. Of course I was chosen and it was really nerve-racking.... I'm pretty sure I sounded like a complete idiot 78% of the time I was talking because I am not very good at on-the-spot public speaking in front of 200 of my peers. Not to mention I knew almost nothing about Bosnia because I wasn't paying attention that day in class for whatever reason. If I had been forewarned I'm sure I would have been able to actually discuss the conflicts. And I think she chose us because of our high scores so the other two were brilliant and articulate. Great.

After my stats assignment was turned in, at 5 I went to the third day of the Amnesty International Film Festival. We watched two films on gender: the first was called "Operation Fine Girl" and it was about using rape as a weapon of war in Sierra Leone; the second was "The Day My God Died" about human trafficking of Nepalese girls into sex slavery in Bombay. Both were incredibly powerful documentaries. We had a grad student talk to us about an organization, safe-house he worked for in Belgium that took in and rehabilitated former sex slaves. He's starting an NGO here in Provo to bolster support and increase awareness for the issue from the community, especially here on campus where "sex" is such a dirty word people will not even talk about human trafficking according to one professor. Nonetheless... BYU has shut down him forming this group on campus for a few years in a row but he's hoping through wording and increased sensitivity he'll be able to get it through this year.

My birthday

It's my day of birth. Yay.

My friend Braidy brought me the most amazing gift ever to class this morning. A plate of delicious homemade cookies and an entire stocking full of organic dark chocolate. She is seriously amazing...

That's been the highlight of my day thus far. I also got cards from my grandparents which is always nice. AND I also got the gift of a huge statistics research project due in three hours! So back to that.... but more to come later tonight from the office.

My first snow of the season

I woke up this morning, only to find my car in this state.

Now I am sitting at my desk with the huge windows watching the beauty outside. And a really trippy movie called The City of Lost Children.

If the entire world was one village of 100 people

The village would have 60 Asians, 14 Africans, 12 Europeans, 8 Latin Americans, 5 from the USA and Canada, and 1 from the South Pacific

51 would be male, 49 would be female

82 would be non-white; 18 white

67 would be non-Christian; 33 would be Christian

80 would live in substandard housing

67 would be unable to read

50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation

33 would be without access to a safe water supply

39 would lack access to improved sanitation

24 would not have any electricity (And of the 76 that do
have electricity, most would only use it for light at night.)

7 people would have access to the Internet

1 would have a college education

1 would have HIV

2 would be near birth; 1 near death

5 would control 32% of the entire world’s wealth; all 5 would be US citizens

33 would be receiving --and attempting to live on-- only 3% of the income



Thought this was really telling of the world we live in. My professor, Valerie Hudson shared it with us today. I think her international relations class has been my favorite thus far at BYU. Oh, and remember that 102 I got on the first exam? We were given back our second exam on Wednesday and guess who just so happened to get the highest grade yet again, clocking in at a 103? Yeah, it was me.

Also, another cool resource is her WomanStats database. Along with a group of student coders, she has compiled the most comprehensive database on the status of women internationally. I hopefully will be working for her project next semester!

My survey

For my political science methodology course, I am doing a project on the correlation between the amount of time a mother spent working outside the home and their children's ACT/SAT scores. If you'd like to be part of this monumental research, please leave a comment with the number of hours your mom worked (include only paid employment, not church callings, PTO obligations,etc.) while you were in high school and your standardized test score.

Thanks for participating.




P.S. I'm pretty sure this violates some sort of IRB regulation :)

My pathetic wardrobe

Sometimes, I look at my closet and get really discouraged. Mostly because I have a very limited amount of clothes and the ones I really like have already been worn 2308 times and are now dirty, and I won't do laundry more than once a month (last winter, I did it ONCE all semester) The other thing is that 90% of my clothes don't fit me. I have one pair of jeans from last year that fits and that's after a routine of squats and kicks to get in them. The other two pair I have I got on ebay this year and they are great. And since I live in jeans, having only two functional pairs when you don't do laundry very often can sometimes prove difficult. Another thing is the wearness of my clothes. When I find something I like, I'll wear it once a week or more because hey, it looks good and is comfy. So, basically the things I really like to wear are worn thin. Probably 75% of my shirts have some kind of hole in them; in fact, I just discovered a tear in my favorite black tanktop that I stole from Allison last year which inspired me to write this post. About 75% of my clothes were also bought in high school. Let's face it; my personality (not to mention fashion.... one of my favorite pair of pants right now are brown gauchos. I've been informed these are no longer cool.) has changed a lot since then and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to pick out clothes I like from my own closet. I can pull together probably three or four decent outfits, but after that, it's t-shirts and my Yale hoodie for the rest of the week. I will admit that I do have a few really nice Sunday pieces thanks to Mom and a huge Arden B sale last Christmas. Oh, and I must mention my beautiful kelly-green wool coat I bought from Nordstrom on a whim and peer pressure. If only I could wear that and only that.

The solution: Lose 20 lbs. Find the money and time and patience to go shopping. Be on "What not to wear".


The upside: Cecilia has more clothes than anyone I've ever met.
The downside: Barely any of them fit me.

Thanksgiving

Last week's break was absolutely glorious. Work was canceled Wednesday and Thursday, so Wed. morning I headed up to Salt Lake. First on the agenda was going to Austin's class at an elementary school in South Jordan and talking to her class about South Africa. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I did not get to do my little presentation but I'm looking forward to another visit in the near future. After that, Austin was off to see her family in Washington and so I headed to downtown Salt Lake. I hung out at Temple Square for a bit in the Visitor's Center, visited Aunt Linda at her office, went back to Temple Square and watched the Joseph Smith movie. After another few hours at the Visitor's Center (I pretended to be not a member but really interested to make the missionaries happy... it was worth it), I drove to the airport and picked Christopher up. We headed up to Kaysville to spend Thanksgiving with Christopher's large and loud extended family. This was my second famed Anderson family Thanksgiving and it was great! We played games all day and night and there was always something going on and someone to play with. After two years of not playing Rook, I picked it back up and Christopher and I dominated, our favorite moment being when we beat his dad and uncle in our last hand which was a perfect 300 hand. It was a beautiful and proud moment for me (and for him also, I'm sure). After one more game in the tournament, I had to hurry back to Provo to work in the afternoon on Friday.... and that's when it began. I got so sick on Friday night and into Saturday morning and it was bizarre. It was a little like my numerous African stomach illnesses I had this summer but man, it was miserable. Not to mention I had to crawl off the ground and answer the phone between puking into the trash can beside me. YUCK. Then I had to go home at 1 am to an empty apartment because all my roommates were gone! Luckily I just fell asleep after about an hour and then by the next morning I was feeling better if still not 100%. And I haven't eaten much since then.... maybe this is a good start to my detox diet?

The Master Cleanse

After Thanksgiving, Cecilia are going on the master cleanse detox diet. For ten days, we will eat nothing and drink only a concoction of maple syrup, cayenne pepper and lemon juice, laxative tea at night and a salt-water flush every morning. Apparently, the diet serves to rid your body of toxins and remove excess waste that has built up in the intestines. Then for the next ten days after the diet has ended you gradually introduce food to your body like vegetable broths, raw vegetables and fruits, and eventually you add in your carbs. It is supposed to not be used as a weight-loss regimen but to begin a cycle of healthy-eating. Although I eat pretty healthy right now, I can't seem to get rid of this gut I built up in South Africa and I think this may help me get rid of it. And Ce and I are going to walk at night after work and maybe I'll get up and do some yoga before class. I have got to do something to get rid of this weight I have gained because it's annoying me! The cleanse is also supposed to aid in reducing the cravings for fatty, carby food, which I could use.

I didn't get to do this in YW!

So, with all this talk of marriage in the air, I've decided to do something that I probably should have done when I was 12. But I was always a rebellious little YW and so I never wanted to do this. Who wants to think about what their future husband will be like when they're 12? Plus, everyone always had the same answers (Strong testimony, good priesthood holder, HOT.) Well, here are my minimum requirements I've finally decided on:

1. SMART. This is crucial. A companion who can debate healthcare reform and understand quantum physics would be welcome. A nerdy professor type is kind of what I'm going for, glasses really turn me on. But he also has to have social skills.
2. Well-read. Not neccesarily of the classics, but of NYT bestsellers and the like. An interest for continually learning together by reading and discussing.
3. If he has a subscription to the Economist, I'm sold.
4. Internationally-minded. If he isn't foreign (read below), then he at least needs to have traveled and have an understanding of another culture. Has to be willing to live all over with me. Has to love African babies and want to adopt.
5. I would love a guy who spoke an Asian language, just so he could teach it to my kids. I think it's a waste when missionaries or native speakers who know another language don't teach their children. I wish to anything I knew another language.
6. Supports me in my career decisions. This is kind of obvious. Doesn't want a little-wifey who stays at home and cooks. Because.... come on.
7. Asian. I prefer Chinese or Korean but I won't be picky. In fact, anyone foreign would probably be welcomed. Accents a plus.
8. Hard-worker. Will share equally the responsibilities of marriage and future kids. I expect a husband that changes diapers and does the dishes, right alongside me.
9. A do-it-yourselfer. I'm kind of getting in to this whole, buy an old house and fix it up thing. I think that'd really be an awesome learning and growing experience and I need someone that can take on the challenge.
10. Healthy but not buff. I really am not into guys who spend hours in the gym, nor am I into someone who eats mac & cheese and pizza for every meal and is a couch potato.
11. Which brings me to... adventurous eater. I love trying new cuisine and random eaterieis and need somone who will go along with me. Vegetarian a plus.
11.5. Willing to quell sexual urges and date at least a year. Although I can be irrestibility desirable, I'm not into this whole quickie-marriage thing.
12. Foreign-film lover. Has to take me to the IC. And enjoy it. Can't be afraid of subtitles.
13. Ok, maybe somewhere on this list I should go ahead and add member of the Church. So here it is. Honors his priesthood. Can take me to the temple. Converts OK as are non-members who have potential but exhibit it before we're married.
14. Anti-superficial. Not a pretty boy. Can't spend more on clothes than me or take more time to get ready. This might be tough, because everyone knows how little I spend on clothes and my speedy-quick 10-minute getting ready skill. So, maybe this one can be a little lenient.
15. East-coast liver. Or just want to live on the East Coast. I will not subject myself to the torture that is living in the West. Sorry Utahns and Arizonians. If not on the East Coast, then maybe in another country. I would not be opposed to moving to Europe or Asia.
16. Liberal. Has to love healthcare reform and equal rights. Must be willing to vote for a female senator. Must support my feminist tendencies, or at least have a good laugh at them. But not in a condascending or demeaning way.
17. A tad neurotic and willing to show it. Because let's face it, I'm a little crazy.
18. The right sense of humor. The Office NOT Dumb & Dumber. Intelligent humor. Stephen Colbert. Witty.
19. Wants 4-5 children and is willing to go along with my weird names.
20. Beach-lover. Surfer a plus because I've always wanted to learn.
21. Adventurous. Safaris in Africa, elephant riding in India, scuba-diving in Australia, backpacking Croatia, bungee-jumping at Vic Falls. You know, the usual. Spontaneous and not scared to try new things and dive right in.

Um. Ok. that's all I got. Kudos to those who read all of that.
Anybody know anyone who fits the criteria? Hook me up.

And please no derisive comments.

Paradise Now

While I don't claim to be Siskel & Ebert (though come to think of it, I don't always agree with their ratings in the least), here's a film review for all my readers. The movie is an independent film called Paradise Now. We watched it this evening for my international relations class and I was so touched. Not only is it beautiful, it is incredibly thought-provoking. The film takes you out of your paradigm and into a completely foreign one. The setting is the West Bank and the characters are young Palestinian men who want to be a part of the resistance against the Israelis. They are chosen to complete a mission, suicide-bombing a group of Israeli soldiers. Never before have I ever seen suicide-bombing and thought... oh, THAT'S why they do it. It really gives you their perspective, humanizes these men. You can sense the pain,the frustration, the prison-like existance they live in. Things are a lot more complicated than our society makes them, and there are really no clear definitions of right and wrong. It is all a matter of perspective. Moral relativity... who espoused that one? Was it... Hobbes? I think so. This philosophy class is really paying off, huh?

Back to the movie: I just want to talk about one image that really struck me. All of the imagery was moving, but the two cityscapes of the West Bank city and then Tel Aviv were represented in stark contrast. In Palestine, the buildings were bombed out, the streets were dirty, and the people sullen. As sooon as Said and Khaled got to Tel Aviv, the landscape changed dramatically. As they were driving down the street you saw girls in bikinis rollar-blading down the boardwalk, fancy cars, and soaring skyscrapers. While I do not know how much of this imagery was propaganda of sorts, you do have to take into account that the per capita GDP in Israeli is around $26,000 and in Palestine it's around $1500. This is especially unsettling considering they occupy nearly the same land in terms of resources and geography.

Overall, this film really puts the radical Islamic ideology into perspective as well as elucidates some vague nuances of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.

Loud noises

Aren't libraries supposed to be a place of quiet and solitude? Why does the cleaning crew insist on starting steam-cleaning of the carpets before it's closed? How are frantic paper-writers like me supposed to focus on Kant's moral objectives when there is a horribly loud noise being emitted behind me?!

My letter to the stake pres.

Dear President Rowley,

After spending last evening praying and thinking about the talk you gave in stake conference yesterday, I feel a strong urge to write you a letter and express my concern over the words you shared with members of your stake.
First of all, I feel it is inappropriate and uncalled for to speak of your sexual relations with your wife from the pulpit. I guarantee that it made most everyone in the congregation feel awkward to hear of your touching her “sacred parts,” not to mention how she felt as she sat on the stand.
The one sentence in which you referred to that is of course a minor issue and not my primary concern. My main concern lies in the opinion you expressed about the consequence of sexual sin. We all realize sexual sin is gravely wrong and messing around with such a major sin is dangerous and leads to great heartache. There are many in our stake that I’m sure can attest to the pain of repentance that comes with confessing and cleansing yourself from such a mistake. However, you implied that once a person has even touched another inappropriately before marriage, then they are not to be trusted by their spouse. Although I may be wrongly interpreting your teachings, it seemed to me as well as others you were espousing that once you made a mistake it could never be undone. The doctrine of the Church teaches the opposite; if full repentance is sought and granted, the sin is forgiven and forgotten and should no longer be remembered or dwelt upon by the now-worthy individual. You expressed the thought that if you are pure and unsexual during courtship and engagement, you are completely able to be trusted not to have extramarital relations in the future. By trying to encourage the congregation to remain pure, I think you ostracized those who have made mistakes in the past. I think the subject of repentance was talked about too briefly; while you mentioned it in just a few sentences, I think it’s the focal point of this discussion. Yes, perhaps some of us have fallen, but we still have great hope for our future and especially our relationship with our eternal companion.
Another problem I wanted to address was your statistic that 40 percent of marriages in the Church end in divorce because of pornography. I asked several others afterwards just to see if I misunderstand what you said, but they all verified what I heard. I hope you meant that 40 percent of marriages that end in the Church are a result of pornography. The statistic that I heard is an inaccurate and exaggerated statistic because not even 40 percent of marriages in the Church end in divorce; the official rate as established by Professor Daniel K. Judd, a professor at BYU and member of the Sunday school general presidency, is around 6% of temple marriages.
The last question I want to ask you is this: Where has all the doctrine gone? Whatever happened to speaking of Christ? To quote the scriptures: “And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ… that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins” (2 Nephi 25:26). In short, stake conference left me feeling frustrated and confused as opposed to uplifted.
Moreover, I was not the only one who left stake conference upset. I spoke with several others including my roommates who also were a bit apprehensive about your statements, which I can only see as your opinion and are in no way Church doctrine. While I do not seek to undermine your authority or “steady the ark,” I just could not contain my sentiments and felt you should know the concerns of your constituents.

Kind regards,
Caitlin Carroll

A method of keeping your GPA up without studying.

No, I'm not talking about cheating. That would be immoral. My method of getting a 4.0 while not studying is by killing my roommate, which I inadvertently almost did last night.

Cleaning checks are this strange BYU phenomena that cut down on the negative externalities associated with being a renter as opposed to an owner and attempts to free-load from your roommate's cleanliness. They occur usually once a month, and they are stressful to everyone involved because the incentive for passing is saving you anywhere from between 20 and 50 dollars. After cleaning for approximately 8 hours Sunday and Monday, at around 2 in the morning last night I was down to my last noodle. Although I had finished my job, I decided to help out my roommate Hailey who was avoiding the toilets she was assigned to clean. I would've too: they are black on the inside and look as if they have not been cleaned since BYU was Brigham Young Academy. I grab some toilet bowl cleaner and a scrub brush and have at them. After a few minutes of useless scrubbing, I look back under the cabinet and find the Clorox. Ah-ha! Clorox solves all of life's problem. I opened the cap and began to pour. Before I even had a chance to grab the scrubber, the room filled with fumes and I near passed out. I flushed the toilet quickly and rushed to my window where I stuck my head out sputtering and gasping and coughing. Meanwhile, Cecilia wanders into the bathroom and then by the time I walk back out she has passed out on Becca and Katy's floor and is doing this weird thing It wasn't a seizure like Devin has but her muscles were clenching and it really freaked uso out. We pick her up and put her on the bed and open all the windows to get air in and I turn the fan on. After a minute of not getting better, I called 911 and the paramedics came to check her out. I told them they can't take her because it costs money so they came up to the bedroom and took pressure and pulse and then one of the big, strong paramedics carried her next door to recover on their couch.

We passed our cleaning check. All is well in the world.

Halloween party

So, on Halloween, my roommates and I in one genius collaboration decided to throw a party. This was no ordinary party: this was hardcore. I'm talking hours spent decorating, making food, and preparing for the party. At the onset of the party, there were quite a few people at our house. However, within the hour they had dissipated, presumably going more popular parties, but they did eat our food. But it was ok, we had a good time and ended up watching Ghostbusters 2 and hanging out.

My favorite part of working my new shift (4:30- 1am on Friday) is cleaning out the fridge! Every Friday night, all the food that's not labeled is thrown out by the late shift worker (ME!) So, I work at a company with quite a few wealthy, single twenty-somethings, so that means really, really good food in the fridge. And since most of it is not old, rather than throwing it away, I eat it myself! So, on Friday night, I enjoyed a baked potato from what looked like Outback or something (I gave a whole steak away to a friend that works in the other department). I also took home tortillas, a bunch of yogurt, and other random drinks. For sure, it's a bonus.

102 and Ben

Yesterday was up there with greatest days of all time. First amazing thing that happened was that I got the highest grade on my international relations midterm (a 102%) and my professor announced it in class and I got to stand up and I was thrilled! Then, when I got home there was a letter from Ben Frandsen on my doorstep and it was a nice little note with a very cute picture. The roomies and I decorated our apartment for our huge Halloween party we're throwing tomorrow night which should turn out fairly good. None of us ever throw parties so it's a new experience but we've put a lot of time and effort into it so it should be good. After decorating, we went to Wal-mart to get materials for my costume (I'm Poison Ivy, complete with green glittery make-up) and then Becca and I got back at around 2:30 and I crashed.

One laptop per child

I read this in the NYT a few weeks ago and thought it was interesting. It's a company that created a laptop that is low-maintenance with only necessary software, durable, etc. and for $399 you can buy one for a child in a developing nation and one for yourself. I want just because it looks so neat. But honestly, how many of us actually use all of the features on our computers? I'd be happy with internet, Word, and Powerpoint.
Check it out: http://www.xogiving.org/index.html

I could possibly be the most fickle person you'll ever meet.

So, today as I was sitting at work contemplating my up and coming summer (even though it's only October), I decided that maybe I do not want to go to India after all. I would love love LOVE to go there, but I really want to be marketable in International development issues in Africa, so I'm thinking I need to spend the summer volunteering with an NGO in Tanzania or Kenya really working on my Swahili language skills. Since I'm taking the class in the winter, I think it'd be awesome to actually go over there and study it. So, I started looking around the internet and I found a reputable organization that'll send you there for two months for 1200 bucks plus the plane ticket. So, basically I could spend the good part of May working still at Platinum making the big bucks and then stay there for June and July and get a month at home to spend with my family AND get to Mexico for the International AIDS conference at the beginning of August. If I went to India, I'd miss that and I would be there 3 and a half months with no clear project as of yet. AND, when I was looking at journal entries from formal participants, 2 of the 10 that I read mentioned missionaries and the ward. So I'm thinking a lot of Mormon kids do this, though it's based in New Zealand and not affiliated with the Church. If you want to check out the page, it's volunteer.org.nz/kenya(or tanzania).

Meanwhile, after ward I'm heading to the art gallery for some short films done by some locals. I think it should be pretty good not to mention some of my favorite people will be there. Then, tomorrow night it's IC night for a delightful showing of "Offsides" an Iranian film about women who dress up like boys to get into a soccer stadium after they are banned. Should be excellent. Not to mention Netflix delivered Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring and I will be watching that this weekend with Katy and Cecilia.

Per the usual, life is good. and will be better when my exhausting ORCA grant proposal goes through.

Econ=rock solid pure joy.

I just wanted to devote a post to my love of economics. It just makes sense in my head and I enjoy doing it. I made an A on my first Econ 110 Kearl exam and not only am I dang proud of that fact, I took it an hour before the testing center closed after having not studied a lick. Though I would never want to devote my life's ambitions to the subject, it still has earned a place in my heart. Meanwhile, if there is still decent economics non-fiction to be read, I will read it and like it and feel like a complete nerd.

In other news, I am officially applied for a $1500 ORCA grant. Let's hope I get it!

I am utterly exhausted and have concluded it's a result of too much sleep (aka, 6 hours a night). I really should cut back.

Vegetarianism and India

Let's see. Where to begin after five crazy and ridiculous months. Well first of all, I went to South Africa this summer to do research on mother-to-child transmission of HIV and what the public hospitals and NGOs are doing to prevent infections of children. Although it was amazing, it was one of the most frustrating and difficult experiences of my life. I met so many neat people that have experienced more in their life than I ever will, and I think it's made me a whole different person. Coming home was strange at best. Culture shock definitely set in when I got home rather than when I was in South Africa. I miss the people, the culture, and the food. I think I'm the only person to go to Africa and gain ten pounds. When I got home, I frequently heard "No wonder there are starving kids in Africa, you ate all their food!" But in reality, it was not the quantity of food I ate but the quality; virtually no vegetables but plenty of starch. Bleached, heavy, fattening starch. But ohhhh, it tasted so comforting.

So, now that I'm home, I'm experimenting with this whole new idea of vegetarianism. Not because I want to save the animals or any PETA stuff like that... but if you think about it, being a vegetarian is a much more efficient way of getting nutrients. As a primary consumer, you bypass the unnecessary waste and energy expended in raising cattle or swine for human consumption. More pollution is produced per year by the meat industry than transportation by 17%! And if you don't believe it, I have sources. Not to mention, there are great meat alternatives available and it is a much healthier lifestyle. I've been consuming so many vegetables and whole grains, tofu and Meat of Wheat. All quite tasty and my body likes it too. I also have rediscovered good juice. I missed my Odwalla and Green Goddess when I was in South Africa. They had juice but it was always loaded with artificial sweetener and they drank it so strong!

School is picking up in awesomeness every day. I absolutely love my classes every since I changed my major to Political Science this semester. And it's FINAL. NO MORE CHANGING! Mostly because BYU looked at my transcript and forebade me from ever entering an advisement office ever again. I think they programmed my ID card to set off some kind of alarm. Seriously. But that is alright with me because I'm thriving in my classes. I'm taking an international relations class with one of the amazing women I have ever met and I tore up the test yesterday. Not to mention I LOVE studying for them because I'm learning so much. For 20% of the test, we have to memorize where every country in the world is and shade in the 10 she gives us. We got Belarus, Syria, Armenia, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Japan, France, Cuba, and Zimbabwe. Pull out a map and try to identify those. There is this awesome website called Ilike2learn.com (how fitting!) and it has these little quizzes you can do. I recommend it.

What else, what else? I'm working full-time at a home security system company called Platinum Protection. In fact, I'm here right now working oh so hard. I really am not minding the hours or the work because it's fairly easy and for about half the time I'm here I get homework done or watch movies. Speaking of movies, I am so into foreign films right now. Amelie, a French film with Audrey Tautou, has pretty much changed my life and by the end, I was swept away. Moreover, a Danish film called After the Wedding had me and two of my roommates bawling by the end. Also quite a moving film-- they just do not produce such great cinema in the US! I think my old friends and my family think I'm the biggest freak loner nowadays because I would rather be tucked away in my room with one other foreign-film lover (my roommate Katy is my new favorite) and watch a quality film and then discuss the amazing implications.

I am going to India next summer too. Living in a village. Sleeping on a mat. Showering with a bin. Sheer lovelyness.

Tennessee

I'm so glad finals are over for this semester, ochem was kicking my trash. I studied for that class for so long, and I'm so disappointed I could not get it any better than I did. Although I feel like I learned a lot, the tests were just brutal.

I'm leaving for South Africa in a little over a week, and I'm terrified. But stoked at the same time... being back home it doesn't even feel like I'm going to leave it all. It's amazing and scary and overwhelming. But I know I can do it, and do it well. I just have to keep telling myself that. It's just scary.

I have the greatest friends.

Everyday, I'm amazed at the truly amazing people that surround me. They lift me up, they make me tea when I'm having a crappy night, they support me when I am faltering. As me and Jess said our prayers last night and read scriptures together, I just could not believe how much I have been blessed- I have these awesome friends who I can't even believe put up with me, and not only do they put up with me they love me for it. They are so understanding, they laugh at my antics, they cuddle with me in response to my endless need for physical affection. Even my friends back home are awesome... even being 2000 miles away they still call and see how things are going, send me long facebook messages and share the amazing books they are reading, or come and visit me more than once (you would think after the first time, KK would have never wanted to come back!) I just forget sometimes how good everything is, especially when I'm PMSing like today...

In a MONTH, I'm going to be on a plane to London and then on to South Africa!! I'm so excited but also incredibly anxious- I have no fathomable idea what to expect, from the stories that Julie has told us, it is a completely different world down there, almost incomprehensible to anyone that has not experienced it firsthand. Racism is rampant, HIV is pervasive, people are dying left and right. It's going to be such an emotional rollarcoaster, working with women who are HIV-infected and have babies. I listened to a webstream with a young girl who was HIV-positive, and she carried around a recorder for a year and just talked about her life. I recommend listening to it: it's on npr.org, and the title is called Thembi's Story or something like that. It will make you laugh and cry, as cliche as that sounds. Anyways, as I listened to that I just thought about all the women I will meet who will be in her exact same situation. I was impressed with her eloquence and how she articulated her story to not only the parliament of South Africa but also to the world. I really appreciate her desire to live her life and not let HIV become who she is. Despite having a fatal disease, she has made the decision to not let it consume her. I think when I first started learning about the HIV pandemic, I was a little skeptical about those girls who chose to have a child in spite of having a deadly disease. I just did not know how I felt about bringing a life into their world knowing that you might not be there to raise it; however, the way Thembi described wanting something, someone to live for, it really and completely changed my mind, though I had been wavering about it for a while. I kind of thought about it for a long time afterwards, and even put myself in her position; I think being a mother and bearing children is a big thing I'm looking forward to in life (although not for a VERY VERY long time...), and I do not think I have any right to judge whether or not a woman should or should not take advantage of that privilege.

The closer it gets to finals, the closer it gets to us leaving. And though I'm usually wicked excited about going, a part of me gets that sinking feeling in my stomach when I think about it. I get a little nervous too, like WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO!?! I could be just going home and lounging around the pool all summer, instead I'm traveling halfway across the world to embark on probably the most challenging and life-changing three months of my life up to this point?? I don't know, I think a lot of it is anxiety of the unknown. I have no idea what to expect, despite all the knowledge I think I may have on South Africa, the way the people live, the politics, so on. What if the women think I'm intrusive and are not willing to share any information with me? I almost feel like I'm going to high school for the first time, all over again.... what if they don't like me? I guess it is just one of those feelings that is completely natural when going to live in a place you never imagined you would go. Part of me is scared of AIDS, I know so much about it yet it is so incredibly foreign to me. I think once I am there I will be engulfed in the whole experience and a lot of the anxiety will leave me, and it will be so nice having the other three there with me. I feel like we've become really close as a group, and I know we will continue to grow together as we experience all these things for the first time.

On another note, I watched the documentary Ghosts of Rwanda the other day in the back room at work; I was really glad no one came in because I think I cried through about three-fourths of it. It was a really powerful film, but yet it was also incredibly haunting. It's another one of those things where I sit back and think “Did that actually HAPPEN?!” Was I really dancing in my ballet recital or at the pool in my newest Limited Too bikini while these men, women, and children were being slaughtered with machetes for months?? Before I watched, I had a very limited knowledge base about the genocide in Rwanda, just from what I had heard and also from watching Hotel Rwanda, and I thought it happened over the course of a few days. I figured it all happened so fast that the UN and the United States could not put together a coalition efficiently enough to counterattack the Hutu extremist government; I had no idea that they just sat back and let it happen thinking they could not do anything about it because of what had happened in Somalia. And I can't believe the audacity Bill Clinton had to go their months later and look those people in the eyes and apologize for their “great loss” when he is quoted as saying that the only reason America meddles in foreign policy is for our direct benefit. And ahhhh, the way he talks just makes my skin crawl... I think that's the part of the documentary when I honestly wanted to throw up; it was just so unnerving to hear the politicians later say, sorry we couldn't help, sorry 800,000 people died. Oops. That honestly makes me sick to think that we have the abilities to do something and yet we don't; it kind of makes me wonder if that's not a slight reason that President Bush committed troops to Iraq, maybe to break the precedent of not meddling. However, I'm pretty convinced that we would not have gone to Iraq had it not been for some benefit to Americans, although now I'm sure we're in a terrible unanticipated quagmire. I know I don't understand a lot about politics, and I kind of wish I did so I could have a more extensive view of the world because I think a lot of things revolve around it. I'm really excited because I'm signed up for two classes in the fall (IAS 220 and one other I can't remember... something to do with international development) that I think I will take a lot out of, and just coming from South Africa, have a little to contribute. I am so interesting in knowing more, but I feel like there are not enough hours in the day to read about it with all my schoolwork too.