From Theodore Dalrymple’s Not With A Bang But A Whimper: The Politics & Culture of Decline:

The state has become a vast and intricate system of patronage, whose influence few can entirely escape. It is essentially corporatist: the central government, avid for power, sets itself up as an authority on everything and claims to omnicompetent both morally and in practice; and by means of taxation, licensing, regulation and bureaucracy, it destroys the independence of all organisations that intervene between it and the individual citizen. If it can draw enough citizens into dependence on it, the central government can remain in power, if not forever, then for a very long time, at least until a crisis or cataclysm forces change.

At the very end of the chain of patronage . . . is the underclass who (to change the metaphor slightly) form the scavengers or bottom-feeders of the whole corporatist ecosystem. Impoverished and degraded as they might be, they are nonetheless essential to the whole system, for their existence provides an ideological proof of the necessity of providential government in the first place, as well as justifying many employment opportunities in themselves. . . . [L]arge numbers of people corrupted to the very fibre of their being by having been deprived of responsibility, purpose and self-respect, void of hope and fear alike, living in as near to purgatory as anywhere in modern society can come.

Amen, Mr Dalrymple.

From The Score, the wonderful Richard Stark (aka Donald E Westlake) delivers another brutal truth:

You can steal in this country, you can rape and murder, you can bribe public officials, you can pollute the morals of the young, you can burn your place of business down for the insurance money, you can do almost anything you want, and if you act with just a little caution and common sense you’ll never even be indicted. But if you don’t pay your income tax . . . you will go to jail.

The Millions converses with an online book thief:

I do not pretend that uploading or downloading unpurchased electronic books is morally correct, but I do think it is more of a grey area than some of your readers may. . . .

I think that regular people will never feel very guilty “stealing” from a faceless corporation, or to a lesser extent, a multi-millionaire like [Stephen] King. . . .

One thing that will definitely not change anyone’s mind or inspire them to stop are polemics from people like Mark Helprin and Harlan Ellison—attitudes like that ensure that all of their works are available online all of the time.

No matter how many excuses this thief offers, he has none for stealing

I also find it particularly wretched that this thief considers himself the final arbiter of how much money Stephen King should make from writing. What unbelievable arrogance.

Eat grass-fed and -finished beef and stop worrying about E. coli.

From the New York Times, perhaps just in time for your ammonia-laced New Year’s Eve feast:

Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers when an entrepreneurial company from South Dakota came up with a novel idea: injecting beef with ammonia. . . .

Officials at the United States Department of Agriculture endorsed the company’s ammonia treatment, and have said it destroys E. coli “to an undetectable level.” They decided it was so effective that in 2007, when the department began routine testing of meat used in hamburger sold to the general public, they exempted Beef Products.

But government and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment.

Mmm . . . how’s that ammonia-treated meat tasting now?

Let me again quote Michael Pollan from his 2002 article in the New York Times Magazine:

Most of the microbes that reside in the gut of a cow and find their way into our food get killed off by the acids in our stomachs, since they originally adapted to live in a neutral-pH environment. But the digestive tract of the modern feedlot cow is closer in acidity to our own, and in this new, manmade environment acid-resistant strains of E. coli have developed that can survive our stomach acids—and go on to kill us. By acidifying a cow’s gut with corn, we have broken down one of our food chain’s barriers to infection.

And then please explain to me why no one in the F.D.A. or the U.S.D.A. or the government in general is willing to inform the public that eating grass-fed and -finished beef would significantly reduce the E. coli threat?

As usual, the common-sense natural approach takes a back seat to the needle and the miracle of modern medicine:

Jason Timmerman coaxed a balky calf into a chute on his feedlot one recent afternoon and jabbed a needle into its neck. He was injecting the animal with a new vaccine to make it immune to a dangerous form of the E. coli bacteria. . . .

Scientists are fairly sure that vaccines like the one Mr. Timmerman gave his cattle will not, on their own, wipe out the dangerous strain of E. coli known as O157:H7. But if they prove effective, they could significantly reduce the amount of harmful bacteria that cattle carry into slaughterhouses, which means that safeguards already in place there would have a greater chance of eliminating the remaining germs from the beef supply.

Mmm . . . a new vaccine to be added to the antibiotics and growth hormones already infesting your grain-fed beef.

Don’t want to worry about E. coli No. O157:H7? Really miss eating a juicy medium rare burger . . . or better yet, a tantalising beef tartare?

Simple: Eat grass-fed and -finished beef.

As Michael Pollan explained in his 2002 article in the New York Times Magazine:

Most of the microbes that reside in the gut of a cow and find their way into our food get killed off by the acids in our stomachs, since they originally adapted to live in a neutral-pH environment. But the digestive tract of the modern feedlot cow is closer in acidity to our own, and in this new, manmade environment acid-resistant strains of E. coli have developed that can survive our stomach acids—and go on to kill us. By acidifying a cow’s gut with corn, we have broken down one of our food chain’s barriers to infection.

What really gets me, however, is this section from the former article:

. . . [I]n 2007, the number of E. coli-related beef recalls jumped sharply, alarming food safety advocates and some in the beef industry, who pushed for additional tools.

“I was looking for anything that could help us because people were getting sick and people were dying,” said Dr. Richard Raymond, the Agriculture Department’s under secretary for food safety from 2005 to 2008.

In early 2008, the department told the two vaccine companies that it would relax its requirements. This March, the agency approved sale of the Epitopix vaccine.

“The federal government was slow,” Dr. Raymond said. He called the 18-month lag while the Agriculture Department and the F.D.A. hashed out the jurisdictional dispute “pure wasted time.”

But in all that time no one in the F.D.A. or the Agriculture Department or the government thought to inform the public that eating grass-fed beef would significantly reduce the E. coli threat.

And to think that some still put their trust in Washington buffoons.

In 1990, Russell Baker slammed the notion of “Earth Day.” His words ring as true today:

If good sense were involved here, of course I would be against Earth Day, for the simple reason that practically everybody else is for it. When you find something being supported by practically everybody, watch your step. . . .

The second category (simply doesn’t matter) is probably where Earth Day belongs. It’s a media event, which is to say a public-relations stunt for the folks of P.R. World.

Another good reason for opposing it is that it’s a feel-good stunt. A day spent praising the earth and lamenting man’s pollutionist history makes you feel like a superior, sensitive soul.

Ah, superiority complex. The heart of the green movement.

I’ll remain brown, thank you.

A fascinating commentary, “Beauty and the Best,” by Theodore Dalrymple.

I’m sure many (not just artists) will take offense to the following, but I really thought Dalrymple nailed our times:

The successful modern artist’s subject is himself, not in any genuinely self-examining way that would tell us something about the human condition, but as an ego to distinguish himself from other egos, as distinctly and noisily as he can. Like Oscar Wilde at the New York customs, he has nothing to declare but his genius: which, if he is lucky, will lead to fame and fortune. Of all the artistic disciplines nowadays, self-advertisement is by far the most important.

Seems too many have forgotten, “The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.”