"iVegetarian: The High Fructose Diet of Steve Jobs."

"Flirting with fruitarianism and other eating disorders of Steve Jobs."

None of us, of course, knows what caused the pancreatic cancer that led to Steve Jobs's  death, or what, if anything could have saved him....

For awhile at college, Jobs lived on Roman Meal cereal. He would buy a box, which would last a week, then flats of dates, almonds and a lot of carrots.   He made carrot juice with a Champion juicer, and at one point turned "a sunset-like orange hue."...

Too much fear of death, too much of a fantasy of getting control... hubris.

"In the case of the male vegetarian, what may look like vegetarian or sexual orientation discrimination is really sex discrimination in the form of gender stereotyping..."

Says the abstract for a law review article titled "Of Meat and Manhood," which has led to a defamation and invasion of privacy lawsuit against the author:

New Jersey banker Robert Catalanello on December 28 sued Zachary Kramer, an associate dean at Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law....

The article cites former employee Ryan Pacifico's 2009 complaint against Catalanello, including a charge that he made numerous derogatory comments equating Pacifico's vegetarianism with homosexuality. "You don't even eat steak dude. At what point in time did you realize you were gay?" he said, according to Pacifico's complaint....

"Catalanello harassed Pacifico not because Pacifico is vegetarian, but because Pacifico was not sufficiently masculine," reads one passage that Catalanello cited. "The key here is that vegetarianism acts as a proxy for effeminacy."

Defamation? Presumably, Catalanello disputes Pacifico's allegations and doesn't like the way Kramer, in at least one part of his article, presents the allegations without saying something like "according to Pacifico's compliant."

Here's the "Meat and Manhood" article. More from the abstract:

[Current doctrine says] that an employee cannot raise an actionable theory of sex discrimination to “bootstrap” protection for an unprotected trait.... By focusing on the male vegetarian case study – which involves allegations of vegetarian, sexual orientation, and gender-stereotyping discrimination – the Article argues that sex discrimination often manifests as other forms of bias.

That is, the law doesn't give special protection to you because you're a vegetarian, but it does let you sue for sex discrimination. So the litigant tries to present anti-vegetarian animus as a matter of gender. That's an interesting problem of employment discrimination law, but think about why the courts don't approve of this "bootstrapping."

(Via Taxprof.)

"We can’t go out and lock up all the socially awkward young men in the world..."

"But we have to try to prevent the unpredicted."

Says a psychiatrist quoted in a WaPo article titled "Predicting violence is a work in progress."

The photos at the link — a line-up of Jared Lee Loughner, James Holmes and Adam Lanza — create the impression that you can tell by looking at them, especially at their eyes. But if you look long enough, you'll see the 3 men are quite different. Only Loughner is smiling. One may sense that madness radiates out of his face, but if you can exclude what you know — that's a photo taken after his shooting spree — he may seem like a fairly ordinary guy. Holmes's face, especially stuck between those other 2, looks open — even empathetic — and sad. Lanza looks abnormal, like an alien. The oddness is enhanced by knowing that this isn't a mug shot like the other 2. Is that his driver's license pic? It's hard to believe — in this age of digital photography — that a picture that came out that bad wouldn't be trashed. If I were diagnosing Lanza from that photograph, I'd say his problem was anorexia. What that boy needs is cheeseburger*... and a better haircut.

An analysis of 20 studies published three years ago found that schizophrenia increased the risk of acting violently fourfold in men and even more in women. The risk of schizophrenics committing homicide was 0.3 percent — more than 10 times greater than the average citizen.

What is the risk of serious violence — not just homicide — for schizophrenics who are also young and male? What is the risk for young, male schizophrenics of the paranoid subtype? If we're going to reason from statistics, we need to be able to look at the numbers in different ways. I suspect that the 0.3 figure — which screams you can't just institutionalize schizophrenics — is massively diluted by including large numbers of females, over 30s, and the nonparanoid subtypes (disorganized, catatonic, undifferentiated, and residual).

Back to the WaPo article:

John Monahan, a University of Virginia psychologist... and many others came up with a constellation of “risk factors” and “protective factors” for violent behavior.... [that] the presence of a mental disorder as only a small contributor to risk, outweighed by other factors such as age, previous violent acts, alcohol use, impulsivity, gang membership and lack of family support.

Gang membership? Now, you've got a list of factors that's off the subject of mental illness and more about a young male's social context.

“From our research, we could quickly distinguish between a patient whose chance of being violent was 1-in-10 from one whose was 1-in-2,” [Monahan] said.

Some statistics skepticism: he's saying "violent," not homicide or even serious violence.

[A British Medical Journal analysis found that of] the people predicted to “violently offend,” 41 percent did. Of those predicted to be nonviolent, 91 percent were. In practical terms, that meant that if authorities used the tools for the purposes of public health, they’d have to detain two people to prevent one from becoming violent.

That is patently defective reasoning. Where did they draw the line in scoring individuals using their set of factors? Show me how the factors were scored and who ended up being violent. Why have you simply divided people into 2 groups? Look at different subsets within the predicted-to-be-violent group with the highest scores. For example, if you break out 10% of them, the predicted-to-be-violent ones with the highest scores, what percentage of them went on to commit acts of serious violence? If that approaches 100%, then the "practical terms" about the fairness of detention would look entirely different.
________________________________

*Adam Lanza was a vegan — "He didn't want to hurt animals."

Meat-eaters "easily cheat, tell lies, forget promises, they are dishonest and tell bad words, steal, fight and turn to violence and commit sex crimes."

Indian textbook.

The 25-year-old man who leapt from the zoo monorail into the tiger enclosure...

... had — on his Facebook page — this picture of a tigress licking the head of a tiger cub.

The Daily News calls it a "crazed bid to kill himself."

“He’s amazing and he loves everybody,” said the victim’s sister, who declined to give her name. “I really don’t know what happened.”

The Facebook page is full of sentimental notions about animals and the environment:

An image of foxes with the message, “We have more to fear from other people than from other animals” was also posted Thursday. In other posts he promotes a vegetarian diet.

Another image posted Thursday bears the message, “We need to stop being victims and living out of fear. We need to stop preparing for disaster, instead to anticipate a glorious future.”

UPDATE: The Daily News has now aligned its reporting with what I'm saying above: "Mauled man wanted to be 'one with the tiger' and was not  trying to commit suicide when he invaded Bronx Zoo den."

[David] Villalobos said he even petted the 400-pound beast after it tried to drag him off — and that he broke a leg and ankle when he landed after leaping from the zoo’s monorail on all fours, [Paul Browne, the NYPD’s chief spokesman] said.

“No one should be surprised he landed on all fours considering his passion for cats,” Browne added.

What vegans say.

My favorite out of a whole lot of videos I watched after getting sucked into the YouTube genre "Shit [blanks] Say."

Steve Jobs's feet.

From the Walter Isaacson biography "Steve Jobs":

He was still convinced, against all evidence, that his vegan diets meant that he didn’t need to use a deodorant or take regular showers. “We would have to literally put him out the door and tell him to go take a shower,” said Markkula. “At meetings we had to look at his dirty feet.” Sometimes, to relieve stress, he would soak his feet in the toilet, a practice that was not as soothing for his colleagues.

***

To produce the fully packaged Apple II would require significant capital, so they considered selling the rights to a larger company. Jobs went to Al Alcorn and asked for the chance to pitch it to Atari’s management. He set up a meeting with the company’s president, Joe Keenan, who was a lot more conservative than Alcorn and Bushnell. “Steve goes in to pitch him, but Joe couldn’t stand him,” Alcorn recalled. “He didn’t appreciate Steve’s hygiene.” Jobs was barefoot, and at one point put his feet up on a desk. “Not only are we not going to buy this thing,” Keenan shouted, “but get your feet off my desk!” Alcorn recalled thinking, “Oh, well. There goes that possibility.”

There's something a bit absurd about a billionaire killing a goat...

... and congratulating himself about sustainability.

Zuckerberg's guide on this strange journey has been a well-known Silicon Valley chef named Jesse Cool. She lives in Palo Alto, eight houses away from Zuckerberg, and owns a local restaurant called Flea Street Café. Cool has introduced Zuckerberg to nearby farmers and advised him as he killed his first chicken, pig, and goat. "He cut the throat of the goat with a knife, which is the most kind way to do it," says Cool.

At the Flea Street Café... you can talk about Jesse Cool. You can talk about Zuckerberg Nerd. You can think you're quite fine for needing to see an animal die in order to imagine that animals die in order for there to be meat, and you can claim that your seeing what you found it hard to imagine makes it somehow better for you to consume the product that everyone knows comes from animals.

"No one was cleaning the street, and there were large pools of urine accumulating and festering."

"It was extraordinarily bad — bad enough that people would avoid the corner walking by... It seems like a small thing until you realize how prolific horses can be. We’re talking gallons."

But...

"Horses are not like automobiles. You just don’t put ’em in neutral. You have to hold on to the horse with one hand with passengers in the back of the carriage and spray this stuff down. Maybe one time out of a hundred with passengers in the cab, the horse might get scared, run off and hurt passengers and things. This will be a disaster.” And they say horse urine "doesn’t have much of an odor, since horses are vegetarians and 'don’t drink Coke or beer.'"

Please don't get sidetracked into the general topic of the smell of the urine of a vegetarian. Spare us your asparagus anecdotes. This is about horse piss and city traffic.

"I was dabbling in witchcraft, I've dabbled in Buddhism."

"I would have become a Hare Krishna but I didn't want to become a vegetarian and that is honestly the reason why because I'm Italian, I love meatballs."

"Red meat, white meat, blue meat, meat-o-f**king-rama. You will eat it. Because not eating meat is a decision."

"Eating meat is an instinct! Yeah! And I know what it’s about. 'I don’t want to eat the meat because I love the animals. I love the animals.' Hey, I love the animals too. I love my doggy. He’s so cute. My fluffy little dog... He’s so cute — There’s the problem. We only want to save the cute animals, don’t we? Yeah. Why don’t we just have animal auditions. Line ‘em up one by one and interview them individually. 'What are you?' 'I’m an otter.' 'And what do you do?' 'I swim around on my back and do cute little human things with my hands.' 'You’re free to go.' 'And what are you?' 'I’m a cow.' 'Get in the f**king truck, ok pal!' 'But I’m an animal.' 'You’re a baseball glove! Get on that truck!'"

Denis Leary, quoted a propos of the James Lee, the now-dead manifesto guy.

Proto-blogging in 1816.

From "The Last Novel," by David Markson:

Keats stayed up all night on the occasion when he actually did look into Chapman's Homer — and then composed his sonnet so swiftly that he was able to messenger it to a friend to read before breakfast.

You read something quickly. It inspires you to write something quickly and then to get it out instantly to be read. That is blogging, and Keats got as close to that as one could in 1816. But he was reading George Chapman's translation of Homer and writing a sonnet that people will read as long as there are people who can read. That's all very grand, compared to blogging. To counterbalance, the blogger gets the instant writing out to thousands, and Keats only got his poem out instantly to one person.

But would Keats have read Homer and written a timeless sonnet if he could have blogged?

***

I read the first 82 pages of Markson's book out loud as Meade drove the TT up to Fish Creek, Wisconsin and back — via Whitefish Dunes — Thursday and Friday. I stopped reading at page 82 last night at about 9 when the last of the daylight failed. The book is composed entirely of snippets like the one quoted above, and if I'd gotten to the next snippet, it would have been:

Fish feel pain.

Ah! The fish theme! How apt!

Actually, I'm lying. Lying out of love of aptness. For your sake, dear Reader. That fish snippet is at the very bottom of page 82. It was the second to the next one. The next one was really:

If it were up to me, I would have wiped my behind with his last decree.

Said Mozart — after a demand by the Archbishop of Salzburg for more brevity in his church compositions.

There's another Mozart one that led to some laughter and conversation. On page 21:

I wish you good night, but first shit in your bed.

Reads another Mozart letter to Anna Maria.

***

Let me get the jump on the comments and say yes, I know that Kurt Cobain sang "It's okay to eat fish/'Cause they don't have any feelings." And yes, these days, on hearing "Homer," one doesn't think of the Greek poet anymore, one thinks of "The Simpsons." That's what TV and blogging and everything modern has done to us. 

"Considering the level of sexuality expressed in some of these musicians’ music, maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised if they gravitate towards celibacy..."

"... it’s like the butcher who is a vegetarian just to avoid taking the stench of flesh home with him."

"Uncooked, organic foods such as raw sauerkraut, flaxseed and searingly hot habanero peppers."

What Imus "subsists mainly on."

It's the influence of his wife. He's been a vegetarian for 10 years, but his original idea of being a vegetarian was something I can really identify with. (I was a vegetarian for about 5 years a while back.) He thought: root beer and potato chips.

Yes, you know there are so many things you can eat and still be vegetarian. Most of the great snacks: ice cream, chips, candy, cookies. And all the great drinks: soda, fruit juice, beer, wine. It's only healthy if you make it healthy, which you may be less inclined to do if you're being gnawed at by that deep innate hunger for meat.

But if you can get a highly motivated, food-smart spouse to take care of you and control what food and drink arrives at your table, vegetarianism might work well. And you'll just have to take her/his word for it that sauerkraut is important or whatever crazy food theory she/he believes is true.

"Is there any thought that doesn’t need to be published?"/"The one I’m thinking right now."

Maureen Dowd interviews the Twitter founders, Biz Stone and Evan Williams.

ME: I heard about a woman who tweeted her father’s funeral. Whatever happened to private pain?

EVAN: I have private pain every day.

And he's thinking what a private pain Dowd is and not publishing that thought.

ME: If you were out with a girl and she started twittering about it in the middle, would that be a deal-breaker or a turn-on?

BIZ (dryly): In the middle of what?

ME: Do you ever think “I don’t care that my friend is having a hamburger?”

BIZ: If I said I was eating a hamburger, Evan would be surprised because I’m a vegan.

See how good he is at keeping it short?

Correlating politics to belief in God.

From the new blog Secular Right ... which John Derbyshire was promoting at The Corner:

I have got together with a handful of other conservative unbelievers and we have started a blog, Secular Right...

I'm blogging on the site as "Bradlaugh," in honor of my home town.

A welcome addition to the Blogroll. Note that they are unbelievers, not just people who favor the separation of religion and state.

"Conservative unbelievers" is a weird phrase, unintentionally suggesting a lack of belief in conservatism. Why not say conservative atheists?

IN THE COMMENTS: Some people hate that graph, and some see the face of Jesus in it. Graph that! DHP normalizes it:


Did you recognize that it needed normalizing?

Balfegor addressed the use of the word "unbeliever":

I think it's intended to be an ironic appropriation of a term used by believers to describe people who do not believe. See, e.g. this apparently unironical use of the term "unbeliever." (it's the first hit that comes up on Google). I'm actually a little surprised that the word is still current in its original non-ironic useage -- I thought it had fallen out of general use decades ago, along with "infidel," "heathen," and "pagan."

Anyhow, it's a jab -- or a stab, if you like -- but it's a jab back.

He adds this quote from Albrecht Durer:

O God please smite the unbelievers with your holy wrath. Make them as toads in the garden eating dirty flies. Let them pluck out their own eyes and cook them in a holy broth.

Sorry, Albrecht! We're going vegetarian this Thanksgiving. And we prefer renewable local foods.

AND: "I appreciate the 'annalanche' from putting up my normalized data, but it is dbp, not dhp. Just think, dustless black pepper." LOL. I'm glad someone remembers dustless black pepper. That epitomized an afternoon of office ennui.

Vegetarian Thanksgiving -- why and how.

Why? Are you kidding?! We just found out that turkeys were once living, breathing creatures and that they must suffer bloody murder if they are to become food.

No, actually, maybe some of us have been vegetarians for a long time. I'm not (though I had a 5-year stint as a vegetarian). But I don't care about any particular meat on any particular day enough to complicate the preparation of dinner when I have guests who are vegetarians.

How? Tofurky? That's insane. Let's not exacerbate abstinence with fakery. It's time for winter vegetables, mushrooms, and grains. Did you notice that this recipe for sweet potato and butternut squash soup has been topping the NYT most-emailed list all week?

"I ate orange slices topped with crushed olives, oil, and fennel seeds... I ate cabbage and beans with garlic and oil, and even that was mesmerizing."

Posh vegetarian cookery.

[Marco] Folicaldi believes in using “too much” garlic, and he’s not shy about large quantities of olive oil or cheese either, so the food is consistently strong-flavored and rich.

Vegetarianism is no more a weight-loss strategy than meat-eating.

Nutraloaf, the punitive food that prisoners argue violates their constititional rights.

Can it be "cruel and unusual" to serve a prisoner nothing but a nutrition loaf? Maybe you don't think the answer depends on how bad it tastes, but in case you do, here's Arin Greenwood taste test. He cooks up the Illinois, Vermont, and 2 versions of the California nutraloaves and swerves serves them to a bunch of "friends and relatives" (half of them lawyers):

I picked some off my plate with my fingers. It tasted a bit like vegetarian chili. Not bad. My cousin Steve, a mortgage broker who had sampled the California loaf with meat, disagreed. "It's what you imagine Alpo tastes like," he said. Lori said she liked it and said she'd even consider making it again, though she'd use more spices. Lee, a lawyer and her husband, asked her not to....

As the night went on, and wine washed away the taste of loaves, we discussed the Eighth Amendment and how bad food would actually have to be in order to be unconstitutional....

This was an okay article — good enough to blog — but I'd much rather see this material in the form of a film documentary. There is a dimension here — the social setting and attitudes of Washington lawyers and others — that seems fascinating, but that Greenwood barely lets us glimpse. How did they really talk about law and prison and their own fussy tastes?

UPDATE: Uh-oh:

[T]he arts and culture writers at The Onion's A.V. Club did this same stunt last April!

The A.V. Club story of the Nutraloaf stunt is more entertaining, because it has more unappetizing photos and even a little video! ... They all agreed that it was gross, so this Slate version could've been much more Slate-y if they'd decided it was actually delicious.

The new global warming message: eating meat is worse than driving.

Horrors! But didn't you know this already? And don't whine that this means you have to be a vegetarian. Animal rights folk are trying to make it look that way:

“You just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist,” said Mr. Prescott, whose group also plans to send billboard-toting trucks to the Colorado Convention Center in Denver when Mr. Gore lectures there on Oct. 2. The billboards will feature a cartoon image of Mr. Gore eating a drumstick next to the tagline: “Too Chicken to Go Vegetarian? Meat Is the No. 1 Cause of Global Warming.”

But no one tells you to give up driving, only to drive less or drive a car that uses less gas. So eat meat less often and eat smaller portions.