Save the Hot Dogs

School is about to start again. Even though it's technically only been six weeks since I was in class, that didn't feel much like school since the class was Field Camp, and the classroom was several locations in Idaho and Wyoming, where we camped and made geologic maps. If I weren't too lazy to keep this blog constantly up to date, the entry on Field Camp would have come a month ago, but I am and it didn't. You'll have to deal with it being out of order chronologically. Deal with it.

That being said, though the first day of the semester is Thursday, for a few of us it started last Monday. If you are one of my nearly half a dozen loyal readers, you will remember a post from last year about a field trip I took prior to the semester's start. I took that same field trip this year, but as a TA instead of a student. So this year, I got to visit the same places and see the same views, but instead of paying the tuition and being graded on my notes and quizzes, I got paid to go. All I had to do was drive, cook, and answer geology-related questions from the students. Not a bad deal.

The trip was a lot of fun. There were twelve students in total, six in my van, including my younger brother who is also a geology major. Since it is the same trip as last year, I will only cover a couple highlights. We missed out on Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone due to road construction, meaning we had to detour through the park to get to our first real stop. We saw buffalo on the road. I took pictures, but I had to take them with my brother's camera since mine drowned. I'll upload them to a follow-up post later.

The most memorable night was Tuesday night, when we camped at Boysen Lake near Riverton, WY. It started with a student reciting the entire plot of Avatar, and ended with everyone getting soaked. Also, it was chili night, but that's not important. The weather was clear enough every night that many of us, myself included, slept out under the stars. This class had used this campsite every year for five years, but this year camped at the other end because our usual spot was in use. Turns out this end has sprinklers. We didn't worry, though, since the camp host said the first of them went off at 10am, and we camped away from those. I set up my sleeping bag and blankets on a nice, comfortable picnic table, read for a bit, then went to sleep listening to my iPod.

At 1:15am, the sprinklers came on. I jumped up, grabbed my bedding, and took it to the dry road. Then I realized my iPod was under the picnic table, getting soaked. I ran back and rescued it (it is fine), and then helped move the two tents that were getting pummeled by sprinklers. The next morning we asked the camp host why it happened, and apparently a ranger had done maintenance on the system and accidentally set the sprinklers for am instead of pm. Oops. Still, it makes me wonder whose bright idea is it to have sprinklers at a campsite anyway. Sure, it was very green, but they were watering mostly weeds. Plus, even if they come on in the afternoon, what if you wanted to camp there for a week? You'll still get soaked unless you strike camp every day. Not the greatest idea ever.

Also, I lost my pillowcase.

There was another memorable moment, this time happening in the van I was driving. This one involves politics, and to those of you who get bored with this subject, please know that it is more important than it ever was, and the facts related in this discussion may be surprising to you.

There is a student in the class who is very intelligent, very funny, a great guy, but also very liberal, and he rode in the back of my van. My brother knew how this guy was with politics, having attempted a debate with him before, but I only knew he was left-leaning. A few of us got into a discussion of socialism, global warming, and health care, talking about the ridiculous things Congress is trying to shove down our throats. All through the discussion, my brother was bracing himself for the explosion he knew was coming.

The trigger was hot dogs. When I made the claim that there are political forces who want to ban hot dogs, a previously silent voice suddenly boomed out from the back of the van, "Excuse me, but that is the biggest load of bullshit I have ever heard!"

"What?" I said.

"They want to ban hot dogs? Where do you get your sources, the YouTube comments? Did you find this out at imafreakingidiotretardedconsipiracytheorist.com?" said this student, who continued in this same vein with hardly a breath for several minutes as I tried to interject reasonable arguments with real sources into the debate. The rest of the van was laughing very hard at this unexpected outburst of entertainment. The student kept saying things like "Who is this 'they'? Is there a secret panel of government officials who say 'let's take away hot dogs'? Do the hot dog gnomes come into your house at night and steal your beef franks?" (He didn't really say that last one, but it's on par with the other comments.) The best part came as I was trying to explain who "they" is, and finally as he asked again "who is this they?" my brother and I in unison said "CONGRESS!"

It's true. For serious. The student tried to point out how ridiculous this claim is, and I have to agree with him. It is ridiculous. I never thought I'd come to a point where I would ever with a straight face be able to utter the phrase "Congress wants to ban your hot dogs". In fact, at this point in American history, it is my opinion that the most patriotic thing you can do for your country is hoard up a stash of ammunition, incandescent light bulbs, and hot dogs. And I'm not even joking.

Real quick here, for those of you who don't believe me, here are the facts. There is a lobbyist group called The Cancer Project who has a press release with the following headline: "Doctors Seek to Ban Hot Dogs and Similar Meats from School Lunches; Federal Petition for Rulemaking Filed with USDA Just Before National School Lunch Week". So there's a major lobbyist group trying to get the USDA to ban hot dogs, citing studies that say it increases your chances of colorectal cancer (that's butt cancer, if you didn't know). One of the doctors involved in the petition says that "This would be a valuable first step toward encouraging the elimination of processed meat from the diet of all consumers."

What? I'm a consumer! He wants to tell me I can't eat hot dogs or bologna anymore? What right does he have? Sure, it's not the healthiest thing, but whose right is it to say I'm not allowed to eat it? For any given food, processed or otherwise, there are dozens of studies that say it will kill you next week, and dozens more that say it helps prevent something else that will kill you. For example, apparently the blue dye in M&Ms can help with spinal cord injuries!

In my opinion, it makes no sense to vilify the diet and lifestyle of Americans as getting worse and worse when contrary to what you'd expect if that were true life expectancies are getting better and infant mortality is down. I think that means we're doing something right. So eating a hot dog per day makes you a bit more likely to develop colorectal cancer. What about the benefits? Could it be that the nutritional benefits for people who can only afford processed meat outweigh the risks, especially considering that they can't often afford quality meat?

It's the same with fruit. I don't have the reference on-hand, but I read it in a brilliant book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjørn Lomborg, with dozens of scientific references. I highly recommend giving this book a look if you care about environmental issues. The claims are that eating fruit sprayed with pesticides increases the risk of cancer. It turns out that the increased risk of cancer is completely overshadowed by the benefits of affordable fruit for all Americans, who without pesticide-sprayed fruit would be at higher risk for not having fruit at all. That's right, the pesticides increase the risk of cancer negligibly, while the fruit itself helps prevent it quite a bit. Pesticides make the fruit more affordable, and therefore accessible, and therefore reduce the risk of cancer. Incidentally, organic food is actually no healthier than non-organic food. It's a scam.

Banning hot dogs is just the start, though. If they can ban or tax one unhealthy food, why not others? How about soda? Oh, right, they've tried that. New York Governor David Patterson recently proposed an 18% tax on soda, which fortunately was dropped. Congress right now is considering a tax on sugary drinks to pay for the health care plan. Supposedly this will discourage unhealthy habits and reduce health care costs as well, just like eliminating smoking was supposed to do these last few decades. Well, we've cut smoking in half, and have costs gone down? No.

As soon as Congress can decide what is and isn't a healthy diet, and ban or tax what they find inappropriate, our freedom to choose what we eat is gone. That is one of the most sinister things about the health care bill being discussed in Congress right now. It's not about health care, it's about control. A tax on hot dogs, soda, processed cheese, fast food, you name it, along with mandated exercise, is where this particular bit of the bill is headed. In fact, they want to tax you just for being fat. Yes, I have sources. Here's one, here's another one, and here's yet another one. Even beyond this, if certain diets are punished by Big Government, maybe other lifestyle choices will be, too. This is just the beginning.

Give me hot dogs, or give me death!