I really enjoyed reading this article about adults (re)finding the joy of games and sports that we thought we had to leave on the playground. I have had the best time playing adult kickball, and it helped me meet new people when I moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. In fact, our team--Marquis de Sod--is 2 time champion in the "laid back league" of the LRKA (yes, there are so many teams and skill levels, we have 3 levels of competition). LRKA is also a social and charitable organization--we have 1-2 charity events/fundraisers per season.

This article mentioned WAKA, so I wanted to alert everyone to the Kickball Rebellion-- a non-corporate affiliation of non-WAKA kickball associations across the country.

www.lrkickball.com

I enjoyed this reflection on CR diets and food in general. Traister certainly touches on the important questions of mortality, class, and the nagging question, "at what price?". The role of food in the lives of humans is far beyond the simple nutritive, and it takes on meanings bigger than the simple pictures of health, longevity, bodily control (we are, after all, meaning-makers).

While I fall into the Traister camp on this issue (be as healthy as possible while still enjoying and still allowing for indulgences), I can't help but note that her own examples of enjoyment or indulgence (ribs in marrow sauce, cooking potatoes in goose fat) include the death of animals. This is where I draw the moral line. My enjoyment should not come at the cost of pain and death of another creature; not if I have a choice about it. And I do. All Americans --except for perhaps the extremely poor -- do have a choice both to eat healthy and to eat with splendid indulgence without causing animals to die.

So, to Traister and others, I suggest, try a little Quorn. It's actually quite good. Have some Tofurkey and reap the benefits of soy while enjoying a cruelty-free yummy dish. Cook your potatoes without the goose fat. I suggest this not because I care about your health (although it is healthier to do so), but because I care about the animals that are slaughtered. No measuring scales needed.

You wrote:

What about having empathy for those poor, innocent vegetables sitting in their fields, not hurting anybody. Then YOU EVIL BASTARDS come along & EAT THEM LIKE SOUTH SEA CANNIBALS!

I know you're being facetious (or at least I think you are), but that's really ludicrous. The last time I checked, a vegetable does not have a lifespan that can be defined in terms of birth and death, nor does it have a nervous system and brain that allows it to feel pain. A vegetable does not try to avoid its own demise, but animals do. I would eat meat if I had to do so to stay alive. But if I have the choice to not kill animals and stay alive and healthy, I will do so.

ce wrote:

"Irwin willfully misunderstands Foucault and discourse and therefore misinterprets the use of empirical evidence. And, for the record, neither Said nor Foucault are deconstructionists. And Orientalism is not a discourse stuck in time, it is a discourse that views the Orient as stuck in time."

I fully agree with the above (although Said did occasionally describe what he did in orientalism as deconstructing...) and with most of the critiques here of Kamiya's over-exagerration of Irwin's disproving of Said. And the title of the review is insulting: "took intellectuals for a ride"?? How anti-intellectual can you get to think the best way to describe Irwin's book is that it shows that Said was just a silly houdini magically manipulating people at best, or at worst, a purposeful liar and trickster for political gain. Neither fits Edward Said's work, not _Orientalism_ and not the later work, no matter how many cogent and important criticisms of it exist.

I find this debate an interesting one to have (Irwin and Said), however, and am glad to see such things written about in Salon.