Big Meat is training up influencers to propagandize meat eating.

This has been around for a while. Several years ago, a student at our local high school talked up vegetarianism — I think he even got an op-ed in the local paper — and almost immediately the Cattlemen’s Association showed up at the school to give away free steak sandwiches. I think they’re running scared.

We’ve mostly* given up on red meat for a number of reasons, but one of them is that the meat industry is incredibly wasteful and damaging to the environment. It’s very sad that the Lettuce Industry or Bean Corp. isn’t knocking on my door offering big bucks to chat up their delicious vegetarian items. Moderation doesn’t pay as much as indulgence.

*”Mostly” because we’re not fanatical about it. If we’re out visiting friends or family and they serve a lunch with meat in it, we’ll say thank you and consume it — we’re mainly just trying to cut way, way back on it. Heck, if the Cattlemen’s Association shows up at my front door and hands me a steak, I’ll say thanks and include it in that night’s dinner, and also tell them I won’t ever be buying their dead cows, or encouraging others to order it.

I’ve been through a lot of commencement ceremonies, and they all run together in my brain. It would be nice to say yesterday’s was exceptional, but it wasn’t — it was a joyous occasion, but it was much like many other well-run, appropriately managed events, and that’s good, because what you want out of this is respect and acknowledgement and a great send-off to all the students who are, we hope, going off to happy and successful lives.

As you might expect from a progressive liberal arts college, the program was pretty darned woke. The student body president, Dylan Young, is an American Indian from the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota, and he gave an upbeat speech which touched on some of the unpleasantness of the last four years — the pandemic, an ugly incident in which conservatives plastered anti-gay and anti-trans posters all over campus, and the recent regent who whined about how we were “too diverse” — but emphasized student resilience. Our commencement speaker was Steve Inskeep, host of NPR’s Morning Edition, and he talked up liberal arts and small towns and hope for the future. The one I dreaded, the obligatory speech from a member of the Board of Regents (generally a stuffy lot of boring business people), was a pleasant surprise. Mike Kenyanya seemed to actually like and appreciate what the campus was all about. Maybe the regents aren’t all bad, after all.

It could have been so much worse. The University of Wyoming brought in Senator Cynthia Lummis as a commencement speaker, and she proceeded to give a god-soaked speech, dwelling on the Creator of the Declaration of Independence and fundamental scientific truths, such as the existence of two sexes…and got booed loudly. She was clearly taken aback.

Good work, students of the University of Wyoming. I don’t think our liberal students at a liberal university in a liberal state could have done a better job of expressing their displeasure. The only difference is that I think our administrators wouldn’t have brought in a disingenuous, dishonest loon like Lummis.

We’ll be talking about moderation. I’m pro-moderation — where do you stand on it?

No. Not at all.

Here’s a video that looks at him from the perspective of his professional duties. You won’t be surprised either at how bad he was at his job, both teaching and clinical work.

Welcome!

(WARNING! Ghastly scenes of carnivores butchering animals ahead!)

Thanks to Akira MacKenzie for dropping this horror into a vegetarian’s comment section (it’s OK, I’m a biologist, I’ve done and seen worse.)

I should show this video to all the new students next year and let them know where the college president’s expertise lies.

I’ve got a committee meeting coming up at 8am, and then I’m closeting myself in the office for the day to hammer out two final exams. Once I get that done, all my heavy responsibilities vanish until the end of next week, when those exams come back and I have to grade them.

I can do this. One big push, and then it’s a summer of spiders.