Springhole.net Blog

Okay, okay, just to clarify, I don’t have a problem with vegetarians or vegans. If you want to try a veg*n diet, fine. If it works for you, then congratulations.

What I have a problem with are veg*ns who subscribe to utter nonsense (humans ARE natural omnivores – the only way you can believe otherwise is with a heckuva lot of cherry picking) or insist that they are soooo healthy when they are essentially walking skeletons with dry, brittle hair that they can’t grow below the shoulders.

Anyway, my sister was reading around the Internetz when she came across an interesting blog, Mark’s Daily Apple. Mark posted an interesting story about a week-long vegan party he attended. Here’s a summation of the good bits.

A lecture was given by a long-time vegan proponent, Dr. McDougall. McDougall gave a lecture on the evils of meat and most soy (can’t argue with that one, actually), and apparently implied that when you eat vegetarian, you can eat as much as you want.

Funny stuff indeed, Mark! Most of us low-carbers know that grains and starches aren’t particularly filling. It’s easy to overfeed yourself on corn or bread, but quite difficult to do the same with meat. Few people appreciate that meat and fat is one of the best appetite suppressants there is.

Anyway, once the lecture was over, the people went for the food, which was probably some of the most pathetic vegan fare you could imagine. Loads and loads of grains, a few piddling vegetables, a “salad” of chopped Romaine lettuce, and no dressing. The only fat Mark could find was in a guacamole spread. Fresh fruit was available, which is a good thing, but the drinks turned out to be oversweetened fruit drinks. Yuck!

Now, here’s where it gets really lawl-worthy: these people, as far as Mark could tell, were not healthy. He watched as overweight people piled their plates high with grains and filled their cups with sugary juice. Sometimes they went back for seconds. I agree with Mark: This is a type-2 diabetes epidemic in the making.

Mark observed that people following the McDougall program for years didn’t look too healthy, either. They were thin, yes, but they had no muscle to speak of. They were mainly bones, a bit of fat, and skin.

A 62-year-old triathlete competitor who’d been on the McDougall program for 15 years told Mark that he was a fool to eat meat and that he should give the program a try. Mark was not impressed by her lack of muscle mass and overall unhealthy appearance.

Remember the ol’ vegan question: “Have you ever actually seen someone with a protein deficiency?” Well, it sure looks like Mark has!

You can read the full blog post here.

Really, vegans can be so funny. They often claim that meat is an unnatural addition to the human diet, that our bodies just aren’t cut out to handle all that protein/fat/whatever, and that’s why we’re dying left and right of all these horrible modern diseases. Yet they pile their plates high with heaping helpings of tubers, grains, and legumes which were not in the human diet in any significant amount until the agricultural revolution!

They yarp on about how toxic animal foods our to our poor little herbivorous bodies and that if we eat raw meat we shall surely die (actually, we don’t – we’re fully capable of eating raw meat unless it’s contaminated), merrily ignoring the fact that the plant foods they depend on contain toxins which are dangerous unless cooked out.

Silly, silly people. Let’s hope they learn before it’s too late.

Earth Day is tomorrow, and in commemoration of this event I’m going to post some awesome and informative links and other oddities. Enjoy!

The Story Of Stuff is a great primer on how our current economic system is unsustainable and self-destructive. Watch it, show it to your friends, your kids, etc.

For those of you into do-it-yourself projects, Mother Earth News and Instructables are great.

If you are a climate change skeptic, know a climate change skeptic, or are simply undecided about the whole thing, you should visit Greenman3610′s and Wonderingmind42′s YouTube channels. There’s also How To Talk To A Climate Change Skeptic.

Treehugger has some great guides on going green. Pedalpeople has a list of ways to reduce trash.

Not too long ago I put up a page of eco-friendly slogans for those of you in desperate need of such.

And finally, here are a couple of videos I liked. More like advertisement than informative, but I enjoyed them anyway.
Save the Planet!
Earth Day 2009

And that’s it! Happy Earth Day!

Or, “argument to the ability.” (Correct me if my Latin is wrong.)

It never fails: if you criticize any form of entertainment, from book to ballet, some butthurt bubblebrain will come along and tell you that unless you can do better, you should just shut up and keep your comments to yourself.

*sigh*

Sorry, fantards, but it doesn’t work this way. Why? It’s a logical fallacy, and a close relative to the Argumentum ad Hominem, or Argument against the Man. Rather than refuting the idea itself, you attack the person presenting the idea. As an example:

Alice: Its important that we try to reduce our waste and use fewer resources.
Bob: You’re just saying that because you’re one of those pot-smoking, tree-hugging hippies!

Whether or not Alice smokes pot or hugs trees has no effect on whether or not we should conserve resources and make less garbage.

Now that I’ve explained the classic Ad Hominem, I’ll introduce the Ad Facultas. Classic example:

Alice: I don’t like Twilight because it’s poorly written, Edward Cullen is a control freak, and Bella whines about everything.
Bob: Unless you could write something better, you don’t have any room to criticize!

However, Bob’s knee-jerk reaction is illogical and irrelevant, and I’ll explain why.

Alice orders a cake because she’s a disaster in the kitchen. However, the cake is terrible. It’s lumpy, the flavor is poor, and the frosting job is awful. Because the cake didn’t meet Alice’s expectations, she tells the baker. The baker looks at Alice and says, “Unless you can make a better one, you don’t have any room to complain.”

But of course Alice has room to complain! She might not be able to bake, but she knows what a good cake should taste and look like!

Now let’s say Bob hires a construction company to build him a house. When it’s done, it turns out they’ve done an awful job. The roof leaks, drafts get in, and the wall is starting to crack. Bob complains to the company, but they simply tell him, “unless you can build a better house, you don’t have any right to complain.”

Of course, this is utter nonsense. Bob might not be able to build a house for himself, but he knows darn well that a good house isn’t drafty and doesn’t have a leaky roof. He has every right to expect more from a construction company.

The same runs true with anything else. Alice might not be able to write a better book than Twilight, but it doesn’t mean she’s not qualified to criticize it. She knows what a good book should be like, and that’s all that matters.