Leftover links

Kevin Drum: “The Real Story Behind Black Friday.”

The phrase originally was a snarky dig at customers by retailers, and so of course it started here in Philadelphia.

“Thanksgiving: Busting the tryptophan myth wide open.”

The American Chemical Society says we feel groggy from over-eating, but not from the tryptophan in turkey. I’m sure the over-eating has an effect, but I don’t find their attempt to exonerate the turkey wholly convincing. Via Sarah Kliff, here’s the “myth-busting” from Aaron Carroll:

Chicken and ground beef contain almost the same amount of tryptophan as turkey — about 350 milligrams per 4-ounce serving.  While you might have heard someone claim that turkey made them drowsy, you have probably never heard someone say that chicken, ground beef, or any other meat made them sleepy. … The amount of tryptophan in a single 4-ounce serving of turkey (about 350 milligrams) is also lower than the amount typically used to induce sleep. The recommendations for tryptophan supplements to help you sleep are 500 to 1000 milligrams.

There seems to be another myth at work here — the notion that a 4-ounce serving of turkey is somehow typical at a Thanksgiving Dinner. Consume three such adorably dainty little medallions of turkey and you’ve ingested 12 ounces of turkey and 1,050 mg of tryptophan — more than the amount recommended for sleep-aid supplements.

(After reading several stories this week on tryptophan and several more on New Gingrich’s fear of an electromagnetic pulse attack, I’m feeling a strange urge to rewatch the first season of Dark Angel.)

Also from the holiday table: Ken Layne’s recipe for “Famous Real Cranberry Business.” I wish more recipes were written like that. And from NPR: “Mama Stamberg’s Cranberry Relish Recipe.”

Fox News’ Megyn Kelly says that pepper spray is “a food product, essentially.” Well, no, no it isn’t:

Commercial grade pepper spray leaves even the most painful of natural peppers (the Himalayan ghost pepper) far behind. It’s listed at between 2 million and 5.3 million Scoville units. The lower number refers to the kind of pepper spray that you and I might be able to purchase for self-protective uses. And the higher number? It’s the kind of spray that police use, the super-high dose given in the orange-colored spray used at UC-Davis.

UC Davis’ “pepper-spraying cop” has, happily, been immortalized as a brutal buffoon — a punchline and nothing but a punchline. As both  Mary Elizabeth Williams and Amanda Marcotte argue, this is appropriate. Here’s Williams:

We don’t laugh at the Pikes of the world because we are not incensed at their abuses of power, or because we don’t take their actions seriously. We do it because we take them very seriously, indeed. But without billy clubs and guns and tear gas, sometimes, laughter is the only weapon we’ve got.

This is an area of study that needs to be explored by folks like Gene Sharp and the Albert Einstein Institution. It is a form of nonviolent resistance that effectively undermines violent authority. Laughter may sometimes be “the only weapon we’ve got,” but when it’s wielded well, it can bring down empires.

On a related note, I just added Tripp York’s “Amish Jihadist” blog to the link list here, describing it as “one of the funnier blogs about Christian ethics from a Mennonite perspective.” That’s jokey, but not unserious. Be wary of any ethicist who isn’t funny. They’re probably doing it wrong. (Seriously.)

Alvin McEwen: “Family Research Council whines that no one wants to debate ‘homosexual’ issues”

[The] plain truth is that the Family Research Council is a group deliberately exploiting people’s values and fears in order to bear false witness against the gay community for political gain.

David Sessions: “Why Evangelicals Forgive (Republican) Sex Scandals”

It’s hard to overstate the religious right’s media persecution complex: they hold the entertainment media responsible for introducing sexual permissiveness, the social acceptance of gay marriage, and what they see as general cultural indecency; they believe the political media systematically portrays conservatives and believers as provincial idiots. They instantly identify with others they believe are under similar attack, sometimes to the point that no amount of evidence will convince them the media is following a legitimate story.

“Megan Phelps-Roper of Westboro Baptist Church: An heir to hate”

And here’s the antidote and the opposite of that: “Evangelical Christian Mom Becomes an Unlikely Advocate.” (The story gets Jay Bakker’s name wrong, but otherwise it’s a great portrait of a great lady.)

“All you folks who have been waiting for the future to happen? This is where it starts.” (via Making Light)

It also starts here. This is lovely and compelling — not so much an ad as a 2-minute novel.

Last weekend I was up in the boondocks of Bradford County, Pa.: fracking country. And frakking country was also all we listened to all weekend, much of which I really liked. Of the new songs I’d not heard before, this one from Billy Currington is my favorite.

Jared Bernstein quotes this from Rex Nutting:

When Moses came down off Mount Sinai carrying the stone tablets, the Chamber of Commerce immediately fired off a press release denouncing the job-killing 10 Commandments.

And it’s been the same story ever since.

David Frum: “When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?”

“This $10 Tip Is Not the Best Way to Show Your Gratitude to Your Server”

“A Waiter’s Rant: It’s not funny being a waiter … ”

Those last two links are to the same story — a waiter getting stiffed on a tip with an evangelistic tract designed to look like a $10 bill. (Two links here because the commenters at both Consumerist and Jesus Needs New PR are worth reading.)

Here again is some perhaps well-meaning individual forgetting the all-important First Rule of Evangelism. Every approach to evangelism must abide by and account for the First Rule, from which all other rules flow. Never forget the First Rule of Evangelism: Don’t be a jackass.

This is, again, why I will never put a Jesus fish on my car. In a moment of carelessness or distraction, I may drive like a jackass — cutting someone off or failing to let them merge or missing them in my blindspot — and thus may end up making them think worse of what that fish represents. So I wouldn’t put this fish decal on my car either.

Sites like Jesus Needs New PR — or Stuff Fundies Like, or American Jesus, or Christian Nightmares — are often criticized for being too “negative” or “cynical.” But scratch a cynic and you’ll find an idealist beneath the surface. It’s impossible to be angry or frustrated with the church, or the nation, or the world for not being better than it is without on some level being committed to some vision of a better world. Sometimes the cynics slip up a bit, revealing the heartfelt idealism that drives them. I like those moments, which is why I like this post from American Jesus: “How to Avoid the Christmas Rush: Buy a Goat.”