By ann summers

It is of course a first-world conceit and problematic to talk about last meals on earth when some have trouble getting daily meals at all. OTOH don’t we all like to speculate about penultimate pleasure, except that last love rather than meal on earth would be so much more painful to write about

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see also: by Melanie Dunea’s My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals / Portraits, Interviews, and Recipes

Ideally, my last meal would be at Sukiyabashi Jiro, a tiny sushi bar below street level in Tokyo. It serves some of the finest quality sushi anywhere on the planet.

I’d be alone at the sushi bar. I think I’d prefer to die like an old lion – to crawl away into the bushes where no one can see me draw my last breath. But in this case, I’d crawl away to a seat in front of this beautiful hinoki wood sushi bar, where three-Michelin starred Jiro Ono would make me a 22- or 23-course omakase tasting menu…

I would risk displeasing Jiro just this once. He feels rice drinks do not necessarily highlight his specially grown rice, of which he is very proud, so he would probably prefer that I drink his house blend of tea throughout the meal.

But, on this occasion, I’d order the most rare and expensive sakes he’d agree to sell me. In fact, I’d allow myself to get a little tipsy. Ideally, this being my last meal and all, I could convince the master to join me.

After the final course, usually Jiro’s incredibly precise tamago (omelette), preferably while I’m still chewing, you could step up behind me and – KGB style – shoot me in the back of the neck. As I sagged to the floor, in my last conscious seconds, I would know that this night, no one on Earth had eaten better than me. Pure pleasure.

www.chicagotribune.com/…

And are Snowy Owls more predatory or Lemmings more suicidal?

 

Rates of suicide are higher generally in more “developed” countries

This trend is not only peculiar to Scandinavian states but the problem of suicide cuts across continents and in specific the economic powers in those continents.

More Americans now die of suicide than from car accidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a disturbing statistic that some experts say points to the true depths of the US economic crisis.

From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among US citizens between the ages of 35 to 64 soared by about 30 per cent, to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 people, a jump from 13.7. Economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the University of Warwick in England and Hamilton College in New York examined life satisfaction scores provided by 2.3 million Americans state by state, and comparing these with state suicide rates.

Utah, for example, ranks highest in life satisfaction — but also has the ninth highest suicide rate in the U.S.

The No. 2 happiest state is Hawaii, which comes in fifth for suicides.

New York, in contrast, comes in 45th in life satisfaction but has America’s lowest suicide rate.

Do more people kill themselves on World Suicide Prevention Day because it is that designated day and could one call such a statistic stochastic like stochastic terrorism. (Note of course that I think the definition of ST is a poor neologism if only to satirize its misunderstanding of media-effects arguments)

Like the white van sightings during the Maryland Sniper Spree, Snowy Owls are seen more frequently in unfamiliar areas of migration. But these are facts rather than conformation biases. And of course no one is not afraid of predation.

So Snowy Owls are terrorists because lemmings* (*trigger warning: 70+dead lemmings) or are lemmings simply naturally suicidal. Note also that neither can handle firearms, nor are they libertarians.

Seeking to space themselves out, many of these young, well-fed owls are now invading unusually southern latitudes throughout North America.

 

At this point, we can’t be sure what has brought all of these owls south, but we do know that lemmings play a critical role in influencing snowy owl breeding distribution and nesting success. Beyond their role in the lives of owls, lemmings influence almost all aspects of arctic ecosystems…

Scientists keep coming back to study these rodents because the causes of lemming population cycles are still not entirely understood.

There are two competing hypotheses.

• The first is that predators drive lemming cycles. Fox, skua, and snowy owl populations increase as lemming prey increases. At some point in time, the lemmings get overrun by predators and the lemming population crashes. Shortly thereafter, populations of empty-bellied predators crash due to the dearth of lemmings.
• The second hypothesis is that the lemmings cause their own misfortune. When populations of lemmings increase to high levels, they deplete their own food resources. They overgraze the moss and grasses that form their main diet, which then leads to a population crash.

So is it the snipers or the sniped, much like the reinterpretation of David v. Goliath by Malcom Gladwell as disabled giantism being struck down by precision artillery. Holy hermeneutics, Batman.

In his book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, Malcolm Gladwell shares stories in which underdogs who are pitted against seemingly unbeatable opponents end up being victorious.

Two overarching ideas are explored throughout the book:

the first is that “much of what we consider valuable in our world arises out of … lopsided conflicts, because the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty” (Gladwell 2013, p. 6), meaning that achievement is often born from immense struggle.

The second idea is that “we consistently get these kinds of conflicts wrong” (Ibid., p. 6) by misreading or misinterpreting the conflicts we encounter.

Essentially, Gladwell challenges our conventional ways of thinking and contends that we are stuck in rigid frameworks regarding ideas about obstacles, disadvantages, and power that limit our perceptions of our full capabilities.

Struggling to avoid misinterpretation…stories of lives.

So, to summarize: Eat every 4 hours. Ideally, eat 4 meals a day. Set a schedule for when to eat and stick to it. Eat a mix of protein and carbohydrates with every meal. Eat some fat, but don’t overdo it. Take one tablespoon of flax oil a day. And do not snack between meals

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Eating right will help you feel better.