Time has put out their annual 50 Best Websites list. There’s the usual assortment of sites we all know and love –or hate– and then there are some real finds I, at least, hadn’t seen before. Might want to flip through the listing yourself and see if something catches your eye too.

At the moment, I am enjoying myself at FORA.tv. Videos of smart people saying smart things on all manner of topics offering both highlights of longer discussions as well as the longer discussions themselves. In fact, within moments of clicking the link to get to the site, I found a video discussion quantum computers and parallel universes … both topics of intense interest to me. Then I watched some of a Lewis Black interview, because I find him intensely interesting as well.

Yes, I could waste hours at FORA.tv, but alas, I must go do dishes and bake some cookies and water my mostly dead garden.

I’ve been meaning to point people in the direction of information about Texas’ Futile Care Law for a while now, and today seems like as good a day as any to do so.

From the Wikipedia article on the subject:

The Texas Advance Directives Act (1999), also known as the Texas Futile Care Law, describes certain provisions that are now Chapter 166 of the Texas Health & Safety Code. Controversy over these provisions mainly centers on Section 166.046, Subsection (e),[1] which allows a health care facility to discontinue life-sustaining treatment against the wishes of the patient or guardian ten days after giving written notice if the continuation of life-sustaining treatment is considered medically inappropriate by the treating medical team. For the hospital personnel to take advantage of legal immunity from prosecution for this the following process must be followed:

* The family must be given written information concerning hospital policy on the ethics consultation process.
* The family must be given 48 hours’ notice and be invited to participate in the ethics consultation process. Family members may consult their own medical specialists and legal advisors if they wish.
* The ethics consultation process must provide a written report to the family of the findings of the ethics review process.
* If the ethics consultation process fails to resolve the dispute, the hospital, working with the family, must try to arrange transfer to another provider physician and institution who are willing to give the treatment requested by the family and refused by the current treatment team.
* If after 10 days, no such provider can be found, the hospital and physician may unilaterally withhold or withdraw the therapy that has been determined to be futile.
* The party who disagrees may appeal to the relevant state court and ask the judge to grant an extension of time before treatment is withdrawn. This extension is to be granted only if the judge determines that there is a reasonable likelihood of finding a willing provider of the disputed treatment if more time is granted.
* If either the family does not seek an extension or the judge fails to grant one, futile treatment may be unilaterally withdrawn by the treatment team with immunity from civil or criminal prosecution.

Granted, this law was a slight improvement over the system as it previously existed in that it does give patients and family members ten whole days to find somewhere to move said patient to continue life sustaining care as well as an appeals process, whereas before the doctors and hospitals could just unplug anyone they wanted whenever they wanted when they decided the person was just going to die anyway … while totally ignoring the wishes of the family and any advance directives the patient themselves may have on file. It’s not really that much of an improvement in my opinion.

And who signed this piece of legislation into law thinking it was a wonderful thing? Governor George W. Bush.

But this is the is the bit I’d really like to highlight:

…the ethics committee is essentially the final decision maker in determining whether a patient’s care will continue or be terminated. The committee can decide to cease care even when 1) the patient has the financial ability (via insurance or other means) to continue to pay for care and/or 2) the patient has executed a living will or other written advance directive stating a desire to continue treatment.

Those ethics committees? That’s what I would call a Death Panel, and the pulling of life sustaining measures against the wishes of patients and family members would be called Forced Euthanasia. And don’t think it only happens to people who are in vegetative comas from which they will never return either. Read the example cases in the Wikipedia article, and you will discover otherwise. People who are cognizant and aware have and are denied life sustaining treatments under this system against their own wishes.

Funny I don’t recall hearing any of the current crop of Republicans who are concerned about Death Panels and Forced Euthanasia complaining about this law when it went into effect (or the previous system of hospitals and doctors just deciding and doing whatever they wanted), and I still don’t hear any of them complaining about it now. Odd, don’t you think? It is, after all, a perfect example of the government having its hands on life and death decisions that, according to the health care reform naysayers of today, should be made only my patients and their families. Yes, the silence on this matter is deafening.

I have no idea how these things are handled in other states, and to be honest have no desire to spend hours doing the research. If anyone else knows what the laws are regarding such end-of-life matters in their own states, please do inform me or point me in the direction of information on the internet. I have a hard enough time keeping up with the insanity of my own state’s legal systems and legislation to keep track of those of the other 40 states. I do actually have a life away from the computer that I occasionally try to live. Really … I do.

Betsy McCaughey was on The Daily Show last night. Don’t know who she is? Lucky you. She seems as mental and single-minded as Orly Taitz (Queen of the Birthers), but her personal gripe is the “mandatory” end-of-life counseling in the health care reform bills … which isn’t mandatory at all and has nothing to do with the euthanizing old people.

Her particular complaint at the moment seems to be that living wills and so on are mandatory, even though the bill says no such thing, and that this will lead to killing old people against their will and doctors working within the Medicare system being chastised (in the form of lower pay) for not killing old people. Her proof? A single sentence from one of the House versions of the health reform bill, in a section that will amend the Social Security Act, which involves the quality reporting system employed to collect data on the quality of care received by beneficiaries of Medicare.

Such measures shall measure both the creation of and adherence to orders for life sustaining treatment.

If that seems rather innocuous to you, it should. When reading the section of the proposed health reform bill in the context of where this section will be placed in the Social Security Act, it boils down to this:

Doctors who treat Medicare patients can voluntarily take part in what is known as the Physician Voluntary Reporting Program, which I mentioned earlier is designed to gather data to improve outcomes for Medicare recipients. Please note the word “voluntary” in the name of the program. Doctors do not have to take part in the reporting. There is nothing mandating they report anything to this program.

This data is then used by Quality Improvement Organizations, which, as the name might imply, work to improve the quality of care for Medicare recipients. Once again, this is voluntary on the part of hospitals. They do not have to be involved with these organizations, though I do think it should be noted that hospitals taking part do seem to give better quality care. Also the QIO handle patient complaints and appeals about their care and rectify these situations.

All this still seems very innocuous and, in fact, helpful. It’s all entirely voluntary, and no hospital or doctor is in any way required to take part in any of the data collection or quality improvement measures. There’s two-thirds of her argument in the trash can right there.

But wait! She insists it is mandatory, even though she admits it never says any such thing! Her proof in this case is Medicare’s Pay-for-Performance Initiatives. These initiatives are essentially bonus payments to hospitals and doctors who provide outstanding care and have the best outcomes. She says doctors providing care for Medicare recipients will have their pay from Medicare cut if they don’t force patients to have the end-of-life counseling and file end-of-life care orders. She is, of course, not speaking the truth.

To begin with, the quality of care for the Pay-for-Performance Initiatives are tied, once again, to the voluntarily provided data collection previously mentioned, as well as on patient complaints about the care they have been provided, and data collected on whether or not the health care providers are following the standard Medicare protocols. In short, health care providers not following Medicare protocols and/or having numerous patient complaints and/or not working to improve the quality of care they provide will not receive bonus payments from the Pay-for-Performance Initiatives for improving care or providing outstanding care with excellent outcomes.

Yes, I said “bonus” payments. Not receiving a bonus is not the same as having one’s pay cut. What won’t happen is the doctor or hospital getting paid less than the standard Medicare payments, so long as they are following protocols and aren’t providing horribly substandard care (which would lead to larger problems than not getting a bonus). They just won’t get a bonus. A bonus is –or should be– something one receives for going above and beyond and doing a great job.

Now that I have addressed her irrational and ill-conceived argument against the end-of-life counseling provision in the health care reform bill(s), let me share my thoughts on the matter.

I have no problem with health care providers taking part in voluntary reporting and programs designed to improve the quality of care they give. I have no problem with said health care providers receiving bonus payments for providing exceptional care. In fact, I would have no problem with any of the entirely voluntary programs being mandatory and the information gathered being readily and freely available to all health care consumers. I would like to know which doctors aren’t discussing all available options for end-of-life care and treatments and all potential outcomes from said care and treatments, and I most definitely would like to know which doctors are not adhering to end-of-life orders created by their patients.

Let me re-quote the statement Ms. McCaughey has based her entire argument upon:

Such measures shall measure both the creation of and adherence to orders for life sustaining treatment.

Wouldn’t you like to know that if you’d created an end-of-life order stating you wanted everything –including the kitchen sink– thrown at you at the end of your life to sustain your life that your doctor was going to follow that order to the letter and not decide for himself you are a goner so why bother? For that matter, if you created an end-of-life order stating you did not want anything thrown at you to sustain your life when you are dying, wouldn’t you be upset if your doctor did not abide by that and you woke up hooked up to machines you didn’t want to be hooked up to … in pain, suffering, and still dying? I would, and I would want to avoid being under the care of any doctor who did not abide by a patients wishes … at the end of life or any other time.

Furthermore, if you are partaking in an end-of-life counseling session with a doctor, wouldn’t you want him to provide information on all available treatments and options and not leave something out of the discussion because he personally doesn’t agree with it? It isn’t possible to make sound end-of-life plans without knowing all available options and potential outcomes, and for your average human being, the creation of such end-of-life orders isn’t generally something one sits down one afternoon and just crafts in five minutes. It requires some measure of knowledge not only of the potential illnesses and injuries which might call such an order to be acted on but also the legal methods by which they are created to make them actionable and enforceable.

As we have seen during this month’s town hall meetings, a great many people do not at all even understand what an end-of-life order is or what it does. It isn’t “pulling the plug on grandma” … unless that’s what grandma wants. End-of-life orders empower patients to make their own decisions at a time when emotional factors are less likely to be the motivating force for medical decisions. They are not orders from the government for enforced euthanasia, and, in fact, they remove both the government and health care providers from being able to make decisions against the patient’s wishes. A patient can just as easily have an end-of-life order that states “Keep me alive, no matter what!” as they can have one that states “Don’t do anything to sustain my life, no matter what!” and both of these orders should be equally followed by health care providers … no matter what their feelings on the matter are.

The foremost problem with Ms. McCaughey’s reading of the proposed health care reform bill(s) is she either refuses to read it with an unbiased eye. Anyone reading or researching something that has an outcome of what they expect to find will be able to twist anything they read to fit their possibly skewed expectations. Additionally, the ability to read and comprehend English is important. The words “mandatory” and “voluntary” are on opposite ends of a verbal spectrum. Something cannot be both mandatory and voluntary at the same time. These are not subjective words. They have solid, objective meanings. I suggest Ms. McCaughy spend some time with a dictionary.

Additionally, when reading legal documents –legislation in particular– one must read it in the context it will eventually reside. That one sentence statement I have quoted twice earlier in this post for example, will eventually reside in the Social Security Act. It is an amendment to said act. If it isn’t read within the context of where it will reside once being passed, there is no way to understand what its implications will be. Occasionally, this requires reading and compiling statements, amendments, and information from even more than one source. Certainly, it can be confusing for someone unaccustomed to reading laws and legislation or for anyone too lazy to take the time to compile the necessary to put things in the order they belong, but it’s not impossible for someone with reading comprehension in the English language and the willingness to take time to piece things together and look at the whole without any preconceived notions of what they expect to find to understand legislation … even without a college education.

I am growing weary of the entire health care reform debate, mostly because it isn’t much of a debate. On one side there are people capable of reading and understanding the meanings of words and sentences, and on the other side there are people who are seemingly incapable of doing so and either ignorantly or maliciously propagating lies … or just sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming “NO!” without bothering doing any reading at all. In order to have a debate on a subject, both sides must be arguing from points of fact which prove their position. Truth vs. lies isn’t a debate, or at least it isn’t a debate worth having.

An Aside: When making arguments, most notably in public and on televisions programs, it does help to not only have notes but to have the information one wants to use to argue one’s point in an easily accessible format. I realize Ms. McCaughey enjoys carrying around large notebooks containing the entirety of H.R. 3200’s text for the shock value provided by the apparent size of the thing, but shuffling through pages trying to find the page one wants to argue about and from –and not being able to find it quickly– is, in a word, unprofessional and neither helps her argument nor makes her appear to be informed.

Additionally, though the full text of said bill when printed out in the standard legal document form does, in fact, look like entirely too much text for any human to read and comprehend in a single sitting, when condensed down from the wide-margin, double-spaced, and single-sided printing format used in our legal and legislative documents, it’s no longer than a Harry Potter novel, and the language contained in it is no more complex. I know both children and adults who read Harry Potter novels in less than a day. Of course, those are fun to read, aren’t they?

Behind the cut are videos, quoted information, and links for the programs, bills, and people discussed in this post.
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I just got my Lion Brand newsletter, and they have now made all their knitting and crochet patterns free! Yes, free!!!

Since I am one of those people who rarely ever follows a pattern and really doesn’t need patterns anymore, I would have likely never paid for any of their patterns, but there were a few they had for sale I wanted to look at to see how they did some thing or another. Now I can. Yippee!

I have to warn you though, the site is getting hit massively, so maybe wait a few days for the initial craziness to die down. I guess I know what I’ll be doing this weekend.

I have been finding myself attempting to dispel rumors and outright lies being believed by the elderly in my life on health care reform. I think I finally succeeded in convincing them there weren’t going to be an “death panels” … which doesn’t matter now seeing as the provision which would have had Medicare pay for the voluntary counseling on how to set up a living will or other advance care directive looks to be ditched, but every last one of them still insists that Medicare is going to be cut and they won’t be able to get the things they need anymore.

Recently I sent them all a bunch of links to press releases from the AARP about how none of is this true, but if it isn’t in soundbite form, they either can’t be bothered to read it or they don’t seem to understand what they are reading. Most of them have now informed me the information at the links was just so much “gobbledlygook” and “mumbo jumbo” and contradicts what the oh-so-truthful talking heads on Fox have been saying. Yes, the elderly in my life don’t even believe the AARP is telling the truth. The mind does boggle on that one, because I can’t for the life of me see any way that the AARP would benefit from lying to seniors about this stuff, because the lie would be found out, and then the seniors would turn on them. But no … Fox News is far more trustworthy than the AARP (an organization they almost all belong to).

Anyway, today I found an AARP link with nice soundbite-sized facts on the health care reform. I thought I would pass it along, in case anyone else is having to deal with angry, misinformed, and frightened old people.

I’ve been sitting here for hours writing a post. All the insane blather about “death panels” and “euthanasia” being bantered about in the health care “debate” the last few weeks has been poking at old scars on my psyche. Painful scars acquired during the last day and night of my father’s life. I got to a point in the post where I found I couldn’t go on, so I thought I would take a break from it and clear my head. Then my mother called, and that just never makes anything better.

I may or may not finish the post I started in the wee hours of the morning. I may or may not post it. I may just keep it to myself, or I may delete it and go back to not thinking about it, though I do believe I have something to say that people need to hear concerning end-of-life care and the decisions so many people have apparently not faced in their lives … if the lunacy I hear coming out during the recent conversations about the subject is any indication. But for now, I will post the quote and link to a blog post that set off my desire to discuss the situation and my own personal run-in with end-of-life care and the health care industry.

You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. “Living will” or no, it doesn’t matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document.

If this isn’t a “death panel” I don’t know what is.
–Southern Beale

My father’s situation was a little different, but only because of choices I made, but never should anyone believe that financial matters didn’t play a role in is every decision I confronted, because that’s what health care is in America when you lack millions of dollars in the bank and a Cadillac insurance plan. In the end, whether someone lives or dies always seems to end up being about money.

Last night while we were flipping through TV channels trying to find something interesting to watch, Lin ran across a show called Defying Gravity (official ABC site with auto-playing video/sound). We’d missed the first few minutes of it, and it wasn’t the premiere, so we felt a little lost. Then I remembered I had downloaded the double episode premiere from iTunes just the other day for free, so I loaded it up on my iPod and fed it to the TV while we recorded the current episode.

Defying Gravity is a sexy, provocative thriller set in the very near future against the backdrop of our solar system, in which the eight astronauts from five countries undertake a mysterious six-year international space mission on the spaceship Antares.

It’s kind of a weird show, but it’s science fiction, and we do love us some science fiction programming. Though it’s weird and mysterious, it sucked us in, so it must be at least somewhat well-written, well-acted, and interesting. I find myself looking forward to the next episode.

We don’t often pay much attention to the major networks, so sometimes we miss hearing about interesting new shows they might be showing. Not that they put out interesting new shows all that often (which is why we mostly ignore the basic networks). Thought I’d mention this show, in case someone else hadn’t heard about it. It may very well be worth watching.

Currently, the two episode premiere as well as last night’s episode is available for download (in both HD and SD) at iTunes for free, and all three episodes can be watched at Hulu. I suppose they can be watched at the ABC site too, but it wants me to install a plugin. I can’t be bothered.

Note: Apparently in the near-future the story is set in, abortion has been completely outlawed. I found that sort of interesting in a “why’d the writers decide to do that” kind of way. I don’t think it’s any sort of a political statement (though it could be). Instead, it seems to be a plot contrivance.

Orly Taitz, the Queen of Birthers, apparently got some death threats after her fanatical appearance on MSNBC last week. Well, not exactly death threats. More like someone suggesting she be tried for sedition and hung for treason. Not quite the same as someone saying “I’m going to kill you.” But if Orly can find something to be dramatic about, she will be dramatic about it.

Anyway, one of her fans figured out who had been sending these threats … narrowed it down to an address with a person’s name and other personal information … all from the IP address from whence the email was sent. IP addresses are useful things, but they aren’t terribly useful the way this person used it. Of course, it’s only useful if one is certain the address is the actual address from which something has been sent. It’s not like an IP address can’t be spoofed.

With that said, let’s follow the steps he used to find the sender of the emails, shall we?

First he took the IP address from the emails and searched at IP Address Locator. It conveniently searches for your IP when you visit the link, if your browser happens to broadcast your IP. This search spits out some information related to said IP address. One of the bits of information is longitude and latitude coordinates.

Using this information, he then searched Google Maps for the coordinates. Google Maps does its best to resolve this to a physical address. Unfortunately, not only is an IP address a poor way to acquire GPS coordinates, Google Maps does a poor job of locating exact residences using GPS coordinates. I can enter the exact numbers for the exact location of my living room, and it consistently shows those coordinates as being a few doors down from where I actually live.

But wonder-boy finds himself an address, so he heads over to The White Pages Reverse Look-Up and searches there to find out who lives at that address. Now, of course, because the information put in was crap, the information it spit out was crap … i.e. someone not at all related to the person who sent the email, their only crime being living in the same city or neighborhood.

I followed these steps with my own IP address, just to see what it would lead to and not because I thought it would actually work. Of course, it didn’t lead to my own physical address. Not even close. Miles away from being in the same ballpark. I wish I lived at that address. Looks like a much nicer neighborhood, what with its sidewalks, curbs, and proper rain drainage systems (and really nice houses). Using my actual coordinates at Google Maps, still brought up the same wrong address it always does, and entering my actual address into the reverse look-up brought up exactly nothing. I guess that means my house (and I) don’t exist at all in Birther World. I can live with that.

All I can say is that I hope nothing bad happens to the people living at the address these idiots have determined are the source of the email threats, and I wish these Birthers would get some education.

I’d link to the posts about this on Orly’s blog, but Google has determined her site is full of dangerous code, and Firefox throws up warnings as well. She either doesn’t know this, doesn’t care, is implicit in the spreading of trojans and viruses, or is too stupid to realize why no one is visiting her site or commenting anymore.

The last few days, I have been following a story about yet another up-and-coming young artist-designer who couldn’t resist the temptation to take the work of other artist-designers and call it her own. This time it isn’t a case of one small thing here and one small thing there. It looks very much like her entire university portfolio, therefore the majority of her body of work thus far, is comprised of the work of someone else … as are things she won awards for supposedly designing.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how much this disgusts me. Here I sit, doing my various arts and crafts, trying my best not to even do things in the same style as someone else, and there are so many others out there who just willfully steal what they want and call it their own. It’s true, to some extent, that this has always happened, but people (artists and non-artists alike) used to be universally appalled when the person was found out. That is no longer the case. A great many people today, not understanding such things as copyright, trademark, intellectual property, and plagiarism, see little problem with taking something that doesn’t belong to them, which they did not create, and using it however they see fit. It happens with text as well, and in many other fields of creative endeavor. It’s becoming a culture … a selfish, greedy, and unethical culture. A lazy culture.

And so ends this morning’s mini-rant on yet another young artist-designer who might have had some talent of her own (she did get into a nice art school) choosing instead to waste her days and time tracing preexisting works instead of doing the hard work … making her own art as good or better than what she chose to steal.

Bill Maher’s end-of-show rant on Friday was particularly good. He talks about how stupid America is becoming, because Americans as a whole are seemingly stupid. It’s worth a read, if for nothing other than entertainment value. Here’s one of my favorite bits … because it’s all too true (and actually sort of sad):

I’m the bad guy for saying it’s a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don’t know what’s in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don’t know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.

One of my readers passed on a link that’s also worth reading (thanks, John!): What are they so mad about? at Washington Monthly. It’s about the shouting and angry people at these town halls, and it breaks them down into the various groups represented. Does it rather well too.

I don’t think I mentioned that my fall and winter seeds arrived yesterday: wild arugula, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and fava beans. Even though I am no doubt weeks yet from being able to get them started, I was quite excited to fondle them, organize them, and add them to my collection of seeds. I’d never seen any seeds for these vegetables before, so it was very interesting to finally see what they looked like. The most interesting ones were the fava beans pictured above. Big, fat, heavy beans. I love the shape and color of them!

Not only had I never seen a fava bean before, I have never eaten one either (obviously, I suppose, since I’ve never seen one). I didn’t do much research on fava beans before ordering them, at least not much beyond learning they should grow and produce well here in Central Texas. I’ve been reading up on them today, and while they do seem to have a colorful history and some potential medicinal uses, some persons with a hereditary condition leading to a certain enzyme deficiency are highly allergic to them … to the point of dying rather abruptly.

Not that knowing this information before I ordered them would have stopped me from doing so. I have no reason to believe I carry this hereditary condition or am allergic to fava beans. As far back as I know, I don’t have any ancestors of the ethnic groups most afflicted by this condition. I am not male, which is the gender most often carrying this condition. I also don’t have any other overly dramatic food allergies. All the same, the first time I am exposed to the blooming plants or eat the beans, I will be careful and watchful, so I am glad I did the research. The last thing I need is to die abruptly due to eating beans.

But I couldn’t turn my back on a bean that may very well be a plentiful producer during fall and winter in Texas (and that I’d never seen before), now could I? So sometime this month or next, the Great Fava Bean Experiment will commence. Hopefully, it will only lead to loads of tasty beans to eat and not so much illness and death. If I am going to go, I don’t want it to be on account of a silly bean I grew in my own garden.

Who said gardening isn’t a daring and dangerous activity?

The Associated Press has decided to use software to track the linking and usage of their news stories by search engines, news aggregators, and blogs, and … they want money for any usage whatsoever. Any quote, as small as five words (a mere $12.50 charge).

Yeah, good luck with that, AP!

Going forward, I’ll be sure not to send any eyes to any AP stories. There are always other sources for news, and some of them actually understand Fair Use. From the griping I hear on the ‘net, I won’t be the only one avoiding linking to them or, heaven forbid, quoting a single word associated with the Associated Press. They swear they won’t be going after bloggers (like me) for quoting bits and pieces of articles, but that isn’t what the fine print says, and I have no reason to trust the AP. Best just to avoid having anything to do with them.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go laugh my ass off now. $12.50 for a five word quote? That’s beyond hilarious.

Anyone really interested in reading more about this, Daggle has an interesting round-up of information, and over at Boing Boing, someone has posted some more detailed information on the license agreement in particular.

An interesting story by Michael Pollan about Food Network, cooking, society, and food was posted at Metafilter yesterday. It’s a good read, but long. Only true fans of food, cooking, Micheal Pollan or possibly sociology (as it relates to food and cooking) will be interested enough to finish the whole thing. I found it interesting, and I agree with many of its points, especially that people just don’t cook enough anymore.

Reading through the comments of the discussion at Metafilter, it seems a lot of people think that cooking in the modern world –real cooking, not throwing together preprocessed goods or microwaving something– is impossible to accomplish. One person called it “untenable.” We are all just too busy to do any real cooking, or so many seem to believe.

Well, it isn’t impossible or untenable, and I would say most of us aren’t too busy to do any real cooking. Even if I were working full time outside the home, we would still be eating home cooked meals of the same quality we do now. How? One word: priorities. Eating well and feeding my family well is a high priority for me.

I’m not going to tell everyone they must also make eating well and cooking real meals a top priority, but to say it’s impossible to do is merely just an excuse. Instead of saying they are “too busy” or “I’m too tired when I get home” people should just admit they don’t want to cook and would rather have someone else do it for them. There’s no shame in not wanting to cook or not knowing how to cook or just not giving a damn about what is being put into the body.

It’s a free world, so everyone can do whatever they want, but don’t make excuses for not doing it. If it was really important to someone, they would make the time and find the energy to really do some cooking. Everyone seems to find plenty of time to watch TV (including Food Network). So I miss an hour of watching TV every night, or I don’t get to do as much knitting, or maybe I have to put my shower off until just before bed or next morning.

To me, the loss or rescheduling of those things is worth it. And does anyone really think I always feel like spending an hour in the kitchen making a meal?^† I assure you, I don’t. Sometimes that leads to having take-out or microwaved insta-food, but usually it leads to me spending an hour in the kitchen anyway. The meal is always worth it.

I grow tired of people saying they don’t have time or energy for this or that, like cooking, crafts, gardening, whatever. Everyone has as much time as they need for anything they truly want to do. All they have to do is make it a priority and possibly give up some time from something else they currently spend their time doing. If everyone who claims they would do more “real cooking” if they only had the time or weren’t so tired would please just fess up and admit they simply don’t want to cook, I’m cool with that. The excuses though are beginning to wear thin.

1. † And does anyone think I actually relish getting up early two or three Saturdays a month and going to the farmers market? Yeah, don’t enjoy that too much either, but the food is worth it. [↩]

I do believe this Saturday, Lin and I will be visiting Sushi-A-Go-Go.

I have not had any sushi since the Buffet Palace down the street burnt down, and that was years ago. And even though it is highly possible I will be having some sushi for lunch tomorrow, I will tolerate no grumbling about going and getting some sushi on Saturday.

One can never have too much sushi.