six words to change the world.

I’ve been neglecting the blog for a few days, but there have been several NY Times articles that I’ve wanted to post about. Let’s just do a roundup of the best ones:

• It’s insulting — and unhealthy — to call elderly people by demeaning terms like “sweetie” and “dear.” Stick to the traditional, factual labels like “John McCain.” [NY Times]
• An a cappella group from Indiana University has been reunited after ten years to sign a five-album record deal with Atlantic Records. Craig Killman, the chairman and chief executive of Atlantic, discovered the group on YouTube and smelled potential. The group, called Straight No Chaser, will be coming out with a holiday album at the end of October, and they may be touring with headliners like Josh Groban and Michael Bublé. Not too shabby for a group of guys who thought they’d never sing again. I’m not one of those ex-coeds who is obsessed with a cappella, I swear, but this story is worth reading. [NY Times]
• Seriously, WHY ON EARTH would it be a bad thing for our president to be “elite”? I want my president to be about a million times smarter than me. I tend to have mixed feelings about Maureen Dowd, but she had a great column a few days ago. This paragraph alone is pure snarky genius: “Darn right. And that, doggone it, brings us to a shout-out for the latest virtuoso of Frontier Baroque, bless her heart, the governor of the Last Frontier. Her reward’s in heaven.” You betcha. [NY Times]
• And a few days ago, this was the “On This Day in History” thinger at the end of my daily headlines: “On October 5, 1947, in the first televised White House address, President Truman asked Americans to refrain from eating meat on Tuesdays and poultry on Thursdays to help stockpile grain for starving people in Europe.” I’m not going to pretend to know a lot about anything, really, but there are still lots of starving people in the world, and still a lot of livestock in America that eat shit tons of grain each day. Basically, people around the world starve because we think it’s more of a priority to feed animals that we can slaughter and eat. Yes, I know it’s not quite that simple, but it’s worth thinking about. (And no, I’m not a vegetarian, but I’ve cut back my meat-eating by about 75% in the past month.) Just take a look at this fact from the 2004 book The New Consumers, by Norman Myers and Jennifer Kent: “If each American cut his or her meat consumption by just 5% (roughly the same as eating one less meat dish a week), that would save enough grain to make up the diets of 150 million malnourished people.” Chew on that one.