Wednesday evening roundup

Mark Bittman reminds you that factory farms breed bacteria.

You have a source memory and a destination memory.

Behold the (various species of) man-child.

This is an excellent analysis of life in general (with preferred gender pronouns as an example):

But there is something self-defeating about expecting the world to essentially read and sign a disclaimer before engaging with you, especially when the situation is impersonal. Well-meaning people accidentally disrespect one another all the time. Ideally, those unintended slights are gently corrected, and everyone moves on. And though the PGP model is meant to help that process along, it has the potential to transform into a more-progressive-than-thou whip—the crack of which helps no one’s cause.

And if we go to the post that sparked it all, who the f* cares if yoga is a cultural appropriation? Why is cultural appropriation bad? Cultures borrow all the time. I am more interested in the commercialization of yoga, which she only touches on briefly. But if yoga is the "New It Thing," "new" is decades old. I guess I don't understand why it's so bad to take something that's rooted in a given faith but of general value outside that faith, and just go with it. People do it all the time. What if I want to practice yoga without giving a second thought to its Hindu roots? Who the f* cares? Can I have Xmas dinner all while knowing that Jesus, whom, by the way, I do not accept as my savior, was not born on that day? And that that day was chosen to mesh with existing pagan traditions throughout the Holy Roman Empire? Am I allowed to be forgiving, even though it's a lot more New Testament than Old? Who is to be the arbiter of what doesn't belong (exclusively) to a given religion, or any religion? It's actually quite difficult to build a wall between religious and secular in society and in one's daily life (government is a different story). Am I appropriating Buddhism (and/or many other religious traditions) when meditating, and if so, who the f* cares? This may be the stupidest f*ing thing I've ever read (this week):

If I wouldn’t dream of taking Communion at a Catholic Church if I was attending as a guest, why would I practice yoga? Aren’t there lots of explicitly fitness-oriented options for me to choose from that don’t require me to appropriate religious practices from former colonies?

Um, because yoga is a unique thing that's awesome, that happens to be rooted in Hinduism. You can read all you want into it, but you're not seriously suggesting that I forgo my sun salutations because they originally came from a practice rooted in Hinduism?

***
This, and "Clybourne Park" and "Rabbit Hole," is the $hit for which they're giving out Pulitzers?

Evolution hasn't yet perfected human balls.