It's The Thought That Counts

* Today I received a birthday card from my company. Which was really nice, except for the fact that it was almost two weeks later. Oh well. At least I got a party four days after my birthday - the party was combined with that of another employee. Perhaps birthdays should simply become floating holidays. "I was born Octoberish."

* Incidentally, I'll be going on a cruise in early November. November 2nd is Election Day and I'll be leaving that same week. Which means I get to avoid the wailing and the gnashing of teeth when the Democrats take a hit in the midterms, as well as avoid one week of the mindless news cycle. Truly, this was a fortuituous trip. Furthermore, if one was really depressed about the elections - which I am damned well not - one could just get off the boat at a foreign shore and not get back on again.

* Ruth has volunteered - or is preparing to volunteer - to cook dinner for her best friend and our pseudo-goddaughter that live one state away. (Three people would have to die for such an outcome. Since the girl in question just hit double-digits, not very likely.) It's a very nice gesture, at the least, and guarantees that four people get a decent meal.

* Recently, we received some gifts in the mail from a married couple whom we hosted for a weekend visit. (Before our cruise departs, we go to Florida and attend their wedding.) There were some cute Halloween-themed mugs, coffee and cocoa, and...pumpkin-flavored gummi bears. Ruth thought that the bears tasted okay but she thought the texture of the candy was terrible. I had trouble with the whole concept.

* It appears that Malcolm, our black cat, likes fruit. Mangoes. Peaches. Grapes. Applesauce. Obviously, he can't eat human proportions - two grapes is a lot for him. I suspect that he's been leaving us a lot of "gifts" as a result - that's like high-fiber for a cat.

* The Chilean miners were rescued recently. I haven't paid much attention to the rescue porn that passes for news, as the miners seemed to be in fairly good shape despite the fact that they were several hundreds of feet underground. I'm glad that they got out - it much have sucked to be down there - but they weren't exactly starving, just horribly lonely and miserable. If this accident had happened in Appalachia, I suspected that the mine owners would have blasted the passage underground shut and told the government, "Miners? Who told you there were miners down there?"

* Work is holding a costume party on October 29th. I hate these bursts of planned gaiety - I think it's the curmudgeon in me. On the other hand, work is offering a chance on that same night to see the Atlanta Thrashers play the Buffalo Sabres at just $10. I thought that $10 was a bit much to ask (!) but Ruth and I have decided to go to "Blueland" as they call it. We'll let you know how it turns out.

Where Jamie Oliver Failed

I can't remember that name of that show with British chef Jamie Oliver coming to some sad town in Appalachia - in West Virginia, I believe - with the extraordinarily difficult goal of getting the horribly unhealthy people there to "eat healthy", whatever that means as of October 2010. They don't seem to show the program anywhere on American TV right now; I saw a few episodes, lost track of it, and have never watched it since.

Oliver faced multiple pressures. One was the assembly-line nature of food and the natives' lack of free time to prepare healthy foods or the knowledge of how to prepare it. Another problem was the institutional pressure against "outsiders", a common one in Appalachia where I grew up. Oliver raised the ire of a conservative radio host who was unhappy that some furriner (probably a liberal to boot!) was coming in and slagging this wonderful slice of Middle America - God-fearin', gay-bashin', gun-lovin' etc. etc. etc.

There was an interesting segment - now highlighted on Metafilter - where Oliver wanted to wean the elementary school kids off chicken nuggets (like, say, the McDonald's McNugget). This was his plan. He would actually make a chicken nugget out of the various spare parts of the chicken used to make the nugget, parts so odious and disgusting that you don't even want to be in the same room with them under the best of circumstances. After kids saw how the nuggets were made - and had the choice of eating healthier and better fare - surely, the kids would choose the better food over the nuggets? Am I right?

Wrong. When Oliver asked for a show of hands, the overwhelming majority of kids picked the chicken nuggets. Maybe one young contrarian chose Oliver's fare, the rest wanted the nuggets.

So why did Oliver fail? He failed for lots of reasons. The first was that to the kids, chicken nuggets tasted better than what Oliver was offering. When people decide what to eat, there are only a few who decide, "okay, I'll eat that because it's healthy". Most people choose to eat what they eat because it tasted good. To the kids, the chicken nuggets tasted good and the taste issue trumped all other issues.

"But CINCGREEN!" you cry. "Chicken nuggets don't taste better! They taste like shite!" Well, maybe to you but not to the kids - and how are you going to tell someone that X tastes better than Y when they know otherwise? "Who are you going to believe, little girl, me or your own taste buds?"

Yes, most of the "taste" of chicken nuggets comes from meat with liberal applications of fat and salt. But Oliver failed to realize that this was the traditional diet of Applachia, heavily processed, fatty salty food. It was the only food the kids really knew. They had become attenuated to it, they were used to it. They were definitely not used to his healthy alternative, and for most people, taste is a matter of teaching. If you give a kid cinnamon with every meal, he's going to want the taste of cinnamon with his meals when he's a teen. He was fighting eight years of taste memory, if such a thing exists.

Furthermore, he thought that the gross factor would be enough to turn the tide. Unfortunately, it doesn't come close. Frankly, many foods are made in a disgusting way, cutting the meat off of some poor animal. Even vegetables grow in muck and shit. Life is disgusting. The only way you can avoid that in food is if you eat rock. My wife often says to me, "I'm so hungry I'd eat a rat's asshole if you put the right kind of sauce on it." And you know what? I've started to say it, too. Because it's true. I know what's in hot dogs; I ain't stopped eating them.

The final way Oliver failed is that he naively assumed the following:

My opponent has belief X.
I present my opponent with new information which clearly refutes X and supports my belief, Y.
My opponent, therefore, will switch his belief from X to Y when presented with the new information.

This is not only not true, it is only rarely true in the best of circumstances. It's only true if the opponent is already inclined to believe Y, or if the world makes a lot more sense if one believes Y instead of X. The belief will switch only under those two circumstances. As they say

A man convinced against his will/is of the same opinion, still.

Think of religious conversions, for example. How do you convince an atheist or a Muslim or a Christian to become Mormon (*)? Either the prospective convert is already inclined to go with the argument - his life is miserable and Mormonism is a great life preserver - or the person is rationally convinced that everything in his common experience makes much, more sense under Mormonism than it does under any other belief system.

In the end, the kids went with what they knew. They weren't unhappy with the food they had been previously eating. And, realizing the amount of trouble they'd have to go to switch over - even if they liked Oliver's new fare or had time to get used to it - it simply made little sense to switch. Health issues can't play into it because nine-year olds think they're immortal.

The information that Oliver presented wasn't an ultimate weapon. On the contrary, it was a man bringing a pen-knife to a bear fight. Either the bear has to be sick - or suicidal - for the man with the little knife to win it.

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(*) The argument is still out as to whether Mormonism is a subset of Christianity, or is so distinct that it should be called an entirely separate religion. Islam has Jesus, too, but Muslims generally aren't considered Christians.