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The Vegan occupation

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Something has been happening under our very noses: colonists from the Vegan star system some 25 light years away have been slowly infiltrating our planet.  They kept a low profile at first, but now they openly self-identify.  There are more and more of them; they even have their own restaurants, and even establishments specializing in normal human food now offer Vegan dishes.  The great mystery is how they have managed such a successful migration from such a great distance.

One possibility is that they began their journey thousands of years ago, and are only now arriving, but I don’t favor that.  Vega is a massive star which is only about a tenth as old as the sun.  They’re not that smart.  Besides, immigrants generally are assimilated by the second or third generation, and these have held on to their ethnic cuisine much longer than that.

The only answer is quantum entanglement.  Which means that somewhere on their home planet orbiting Vega, there is a box in which is an identical group of people, living in identical houses, and eating the same gluten-free unfried falafel wraps, drinking the same double venti no-whip soy lattes. 

You can figure out for yourself the implications of that.  For their environment at home to be identical to the one here on Earth, there must be identical humans there.  Which means they have cloned us.  Or are we the clones?  How would we know?

Why, you may ask, would they do this?  Because Vega will last only a tenth as long as the sun, that’s why.  Vegans are apparently quite prudent, and are slowly replacing us with themselves, so as not to be left without a home.

I am posting this on my blog, because I don’t believe they know I’m on to them yet.  But just in case I’m too late, they’ll find they’re not the only prudent ones.  I have appended a copy of this post to the end of the iTunes EULA agreement.

They’ll never find it there.

How red meat is like … red meat

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I go through long periods when I just can’t seem to finish anything: poetry, fiction, essays, it doesn’t matter. I work at it. I take notes, jot down ideas, begin paragraphs, sit in coffee shops streaming my consciousness. No matter how promising it looks, or, in desperation, how passable, I just can’t seem to pull the trigger. It’s a log jam (I won’t use the more obvious metaphor, although, as you’ll see, it’s more appropriate).

Then something comes along that just pushes the rest of it through willy-nilly.

For the last couple of days, the news has been all over social media that WHO has declared red meat to be “probably” carcinogenic. Vegan friends are beside themselves crowing, rubbing our faces in it with a vicious glee. There is nothing more likely to raise the hackles of the normal person.

Sometimes, though, it’s better to let sleeping hackles lie. The rest of us might experience that rare motivation to check things out for ourselves, rather than believe the first meme that comes along.

First of all, WHO has also declared the night shift to be probably carcinogenic. It’s not exactly an exclusive category. It’s just a statement of statistical fact; no attempt is made to judge how much of a danger it really represents

In the case of red meat, it seems that daily consumption of more than 100 grams is correlated to a 25% or so (the figures vary, depending on what you’re reading) increase in the incidence of colorectal cancer. “Yikes!” you might say. But what does this actually mean?

For some reason, WHO appears to have conflated processed meats with red meat for this study, so it’s difficult to assess either category by itself. It also appears to have ignored other lifestyle factors, but let’s go with what we’ve got.

The incidence of colorectal cancer in the general population is about .04%. Eating red meat raises your chances to a whopping .05%; that’s right, an increase of .01%.

Friends, you are more likely to die driving to the grocery store to buy the red meat than you are from eating it.