I think it's good to be reminded of the sacrifices we make when we leave the production of our food in the hands of others. For example, when I was a little kid, my dad used to bring big bags of chocolate back from his trips to the United States. I'll never forget the time my sister and I split a huge package of Whachamacallit chocolate bars, my favourite at the time. I tucked into the first one, and noticed it tasted strange; not exactly stale, but really, really close. After my second bite, a big chunk fell away from the bar. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be the dried corpse of a moth, balled up in spiderwebs. I was too stunned to feel sick. And to be fair, I was too young to be that picky where free chocolate was involved.

Fast forward to a few days ago, when I found this page, which outlines the levels of "defect" that, if discovered, require action by the American Food and Drug Association.

Take a gander. I think you might be surprised how defective our food (or at least, our Southern neighbours' food) is allowed to be.

That chocolate bar was probably legal.

Just when you thought the list of awful things about the Iraq war was complete, there's another line item to add. The movie Operation Dreamland is a documentary of the lives of soldiers in Fallujah. The link above will take you the trailers page; at the bottom, watch the "Recruiting" video, which roiled me enough to make this post. A pair of commanding officers mock and demean their soldiers, who have already served their country, in an effort to get them to stay on for another tour of duty. The presentation includes a slideshow, where one slide called "What are my options?" shows a footer reading "Retaining the Army of One," showing that this process is a concerted effort by the military to prevent the loss of their fighting force. I can appreciate the position the American military is in, but I wish they wouldn't shame their surviving soldiers with statments like. "You can't go home and live with momma; she's not gonna put up with you anymore."

I think most mommas would be damned proud and relieved to have their sons come home to them.

I've been missing my usual good dose of Bush bashing. Thanks to my friend Michaeleen for passing along this, this... well, perfect video clip that finally admits what we knew could be the only explanation.

Watch the Presidential Speechalist.

In Kansas, a group of religious nutbars on the Education Board are trying to use their voting majority to destroy the basis of Science in that state. In case you haven't heard, there is a growing push to introduce creationism, rebranded as Intelligent Design (ID), into the Science curriculum. You heard right: Science.

The fact that it is even being debated blows my mind. I'm not anti-religion or anything; to paraphrase David Cross, I want to respect everybody's superstitions. It's the overwhelming educational wrongness of this that irks me. It's like teaching Geography in music class: both are valid topics of study, but the commonalities are so few and tenuous that there is no benefit to teaching them together, unless your aim is to use one to distract from the other.

Then in steps a brilliant, funny, and expanding group of people fed up with ID who have put forth their own theory of how we all got here: the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). The FSM is a mound of spaghetti with meatballs for cheeks and eyeballs on noodly stalks. The web site starts with a hilarious, obviously unscientific open letter to many school boards, asking for FSM theory to be taught as well, since it is just as legitimate as ID. In fact, many Ph.D. scientists have lent their backing to this claim on the homepage. But I think my favourite part is that in this letter, they use a graph (hard to read and complete with incorrect scale) that proves how the increase of global warming is actually caused by the declining numbers of pirates in the population. Pirates.

You can even choose from an expanding array of FSM paraphernalia, including metal FSM plates for your car (a la the Jesus/Darwin fish), and t-shirts reading "FSM: It's Sacrilicious!" Awesome.

I think I've found a religion (WARNING: PUN AHEAD) I can stomach.