Misadventures in Gastronomy

A few weeks ago, the Seattle Seahawks (football/gridiron team!) participated in the Superbowl, the biggest, best, most important, loudest, and most expensive sporting event in the world. Actually, it's all those things only to people living in the USA; the rest of the world really doesn't notice/care.

This was the first time that the Seahawks had made it to the Superbowl in their 30 year history, which of course was the excuse for the inevitable silly behaviour, such as every local newsreader wearing the Seahawks uniform on-air all week, plus every financial institution in Puget Sound announcing a product along the lines of "$100K MORTGAGE $750/MONTH GO HAWKS!".

The game itself was remarkable for the hilariously inept display of refereeing; sports writers had a few things to say, as did a local Seattle DJ:



Like many things in America, however, the ultimate level of silliness is not reached until you include food in some way.

Here's a picture I took down at the supermarket the day before the game:



Question: does it occur to anyone that the best cure for heartburn isn't to devour some industrial-strenth chemicals, but rather to not eat a bunch of deep-fried hog fat in the first place? Most Americans I show this picture to don't notice anything funny; non-Americans tend to dissolve into fits of laughter as soon as they see it.

If that weren't bizarre enough, consider the fact that a hot dog from one of the Seahawks' playoff games was attracting bids of over $10,000 on eBay. Of course, most of these were joke bids placed by people who had no intention of paying, hence the notorious online gambling website GoldenPalace.com was able to acquire this holiest of hot dogs for the "bargain" price of $1,800. They will no doubt preserve this artifact alongside their other priceless treasures such as William Shatner's kidney stone and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich with the picture of the Virgin Mary.

You may remember Golden Palace from the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics, where a man adorned with advertisments for them (not to mention wearing a light blue tutu) became an unofficial participant in the springboard diving competition.

I've talked previously about ways of improving Olympic sports, and I thought I'd finally found the best way of making curling and ice dancing exciting: hold them at the same time and place. I didn't count on Golden Palace however, who we have to thank for the latest instance of audience participation in the Olmypics. It isn't every day that we see a news report that contains all of the following phrases:

1. bronze medal curling match
   
2. streaker
   
3. strategically placed rubber chicken
   

...so make sure you don't miss this one.

The Man-Beasts of Mass Destruction

There were a number of "What the #$%@#$%?" moments in President Bush's State of the Union speech this week.

Firstly, we have the announcement - straight out of left field - that Bush seeks to eliminate America's dependence on Middle Eastern oil. This is bizarre, because virtually every part of Bush's business and political career has been defined by cozy relationships with oil companies.

Recall that in 2003, Congress's investigatory arm declared that an energy task force, led by Vice President Cheney, relied for outside advise primarily on "petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, electricity industry representatives and lobbyists," while seeking limited input from academic experts, environmentalists and policy groups. Even after 9/11, Bush was determined to tie America's future to fossil fuels.

An acquaintance of mine who works in the Pentagon and is privy to much of the inner workings of the administration nevertheless reported that this announcement took most of Washington by surprise. To me, the lack of consultation and planning that occurred indicates that Bush is not sincere about this commitment -- but remember that lack of consultation and planning turned out to be the signature of an impending massive invasion of Iraq.

Despite being involved with it his entire life, Bush has a history of being confused about foreign oil:

I've been talking to Vicente Fox, the new president of Mexico... I
know him... to have gas and oil sent to U.S.... so we'll not depend on foreign oil. - Presidential debate, Oct. 3, 2000

The question remains: is Bush serious about eliminating dependence Middle Eastern oil, or is this merely election-year rhetoric? My guess is that this will go into the same bucket of empty promises as "I'm a uniter, not a divider"; "I want to be known as the 'education' president'"; and "I'm a fiscal conservative."


Much more bizarre, however, was when Bush waded into the field of science:

Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research... creating human-animal hybrids...

Where did that come from? Perhaps, in a semi-conscious state after choking on another pretzel, Bush watched The Island of Dr. Moreau and woke up believing it was the Discovery Channel? Pray he doesn't start watching the Sci-Fi channel, which earlier this year featured a truly terrible/hilarious movie:

When he began fusing human and shark DNA, his colleagues laughed at him. Now his creation is taking his revenge, they're not laughing any more.

So if Bush had been watching that movie we might have been treated to something like this in the State of the Union address:

We have recently learned that Iran has sought to reconstitute its program of cross-breeding sharks with terrorists and arming them with weapons of mass destruction.

If that sounds too ludicrous even for a bad Hollywood movie, think again:

Drs. Nathan and Marla Collins are shark experts working on a top-secret government project: To protect our shorelines by creating controlled shark patrols. When their project is sabotaged, the mutant great white sharks are released into American waterways. Out among the general population the smartest of the sharks, Red Dog, carries a neutron bomb on a mission to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.

Z-grade movies aside, Bush's desire to thwart valid, scientifically sound medical research reveals he is wading well out of his intellectual depth. An acquaintance of mine wrote an opinion on this subject that was so perfect I shan't try to top it:

Transgenic pigs/goats/cows/whatever have the possibility of creating entirely new classes of drugs that are highly targeted and specific. Chimeric animal studies are beginning to provide fruitful basic research on all sorts of physiological systems.

The Bush administration's desire to halt work in these areas is akin to their desire to quash stem cell research, reinstate school prayer, push intelligent design, and pretend global warming isn't a result of human activities - it's all driven by emotional (religious) and political ($$$) concerns.

I'm coming to believe more and more that the current geopolitical situation is shaping up more along the lines of the Reformation (with a pan-religious break between fundamentalists and 'protestants'[realists]) than the clash of civilizations crap we're being fed.

We have a status quo driven administration that seeks to return the U.S. to past levels of glory through new conquests and overt demonstrations of power and control instead of forging new visions and goals suited to the new world order.

With the bulk of the populace reacting childishly to fear, uncertainty, and doubt, it's no wonder that the current administration won't treat the people of the U.S. as adults by being bold in their ideas and complex in their execution: it would erode their base.

It seems that the only thing left for the U.S. to do now to complete this arc is to invade the Falklands.