Babies Who smoke Cigarettes

There’s a growing body of work that indicates a relationship between our health as adults and our early diet, and even our mother’s diet. This research shows for the first time that our early childhood diet may have a huge impact on our health as adults.

This research dovetails nicely with the previous studies which showed that:

• Babies who smoke cigarettes are more likely to develop lung cancer.
• Babies who do shots of tequila with their parents are more likely to become alcoholics.
• Babies who drive automobiles without wearing a seat belt are more likely to be involved in traffic accidents

Seriously, as a result of such direly needed research a ‘sin tax’ on soda and sugary foods has gained momentum in the press and in some political circles.

When I grew up, we ate doughnuts and candy and drank a lot of soda. Not diet soda because it hadn’t been invented yet. And we stuffed our pie holes with, well…pie; hot pie. And hot dogs and Twinkies (anything with the word ‘Hostess’ on it) and put plenty of sugar on our cereal which we covered with whole milk and sometimes even cream; real dairy cream.

When I look around me today I don’t see kids riding bicycles anymore. In fact the only people I see riding bicycles are middle aged men wearing brightly colored spandex and teenagers participating in X-games. Our kids are all speeding around on solar or micro-gasoline engine powered scooters or other such self propelled devices. Parents shuttle them 6 blocks down the road to their friends house (apparently the cut off for walking is 2 blocks) in SUVs and they throw tantrums if you restrict their time viewing TV/DVD or playing with their computer controlled ‘virtual word’ gaming devices. Apparently at some point in time, these tantrums became so serious it became necessary to install these devices in the head rests and ceilings of SUVs and install miniature wheels into the soles of their little shoes!

When I was a kid we played outside most of the day, even in the winter. We ran and jumped and pedaled our single geared bicycles up and down hills and played baseball in an empty lot or in the middle of the street with a real bat and ball. As a result, most all of us grew up ‘mean and lean.’

There is nothing wrong with downing a 44 oz. Mountain Dew on a hot summers day, eating a 1,200 calorie burger at Carl’s or sitting in a big over stuffed chair with a bowl of sugar coated Coco Puffs watching a great movie or spending some quality time playing with your Wii, especially if you can afford a big flat screen to watch it on.

Government taxation on anything we consume or choose to do in our spare time is like a speed trap. It’s an unnecessary intrusion (and even more so an annoyance) into our personal lives, unfair most of the time and is usually the brain child of some career politician or some power grubbing authority seeking a way to pay for another one of his or her hair brained, unnecessary and intrusive projects or policies.

If government insists that somewhere in our constitution it states it is their responsibility to look after the weight of our children then what they should do is offer an income tax credit to parents who submit with their tax return a certificate of education, provided by free enterprise, of the successful completion of a class on ‘Parenting; the Proper Nutrition and Exercise for Children and Adolescents.”

Now there’s an economic stimulus that would benefit everybody.

- Larry

God’s Gift to Me

When geologists and archeologists fan out and search the globe they don’t find electric generators, windmills, solar cells, batteries, electric wiring, transistors or integrated circuits anywhere.

What they do find is cellulous material which equates to wood, coal, volcanic and geothermic steam vents, dinosaur bones, tar pits, natural gas and oil and an occasional encounter with static electricity and lightning. All of which were formed and in place long before man was present here on our earth. Modern science has declared it so in books. So it must be fact.

Yes, God put all of these things in place long before he created the Garden of Eden because he knew Adam and Eve’s offspring would eventually need to consume all of these resources, in one way or another, in order to energize the mechanical devices they would invent to make their lives easier (after he tossed them out of the garden) and which would ultimately enable them to overdevelop out of control technologies that would, as planned, bring them back to him. God knew all there was to know about carbon, in all of its forms.

What the authors of the Bible (and subsequent historians) missed was that God had given Adam, in the Garden of Eden, a book of matches. God knew most of these natural resources which he had so cleverly provided would need to be consumed by fire.

So, God made certain to create and add an atmospheric buffer around the globe that was adequate enough to protect the ozone layer (which he originally set at 500’ above sea level) from the effects of burning these resources.

Earlier in the week God made a bunch of other miscalculations but managed to correct them all, to absolute perfection, on Saturday.

You may think I’m joking but I’m not; drill, mine, funnel, process, refine, concentrate and burn. The only way to exist in our God given environment is to consume it!

It is what it is and no form of governmental control or regulation is ever going to change it. Period.

- Larry

Note: If you are interested in exploring this issue in detailed and complex terms read this excellent (and lengthy) article titled, ‘The Socialism Implicit in the Social Cost of Carbon.’