Here's a real-life example of a slippery slope. Today while driving I was listening to Stafford on the local right-wing radio station, 630 CHED. (I can tell it's right-wing because they syndicate Dr. Laura Schlesinger.) There is a morning show call-in show called "Rutherford" and an evening call-in show called "Stafford", some traffic news, and lots of irritating sports programming.
Anyway, I was listening to Stafford, and he was going on about personal responsibility. The topic of the evening was a proposal for Alberta Health Care to not cover the health care costs associated with accidents where the accident vicitm was not wearing a seat belt. The logic here, apparently, is that these scofflaws (Alberta has mandatory seat belt legislation) are running up the health care costs for the rest of us.
The slippery slope here is with the socialized health care system. Without publicly-funded health care, it would be meaningless to suggest the withholding of such care as a punishment. Without publicly-funded health care, it would have been harder in the first place to justify government intrusion into the passenger compartment, to enforce the seat-belt law. A side-effect of the public health care system has been to severely restrict our previously-enjoyed freedom to drive around without our seat belts on.
Darn.
But it's still a real live slippery slope.
Another thing that Stafford said, and I'm afraid that this quote is only approximate, was on the subject of house parties. He said:
When I go to a house party, I don't see people being tied to chairs, their mouths being forced open, and alcohol poured down their throats.To which I can only respond, "You're going to the wrong kind of party."
Tonight saw a significant amount of bandwagon-disembarkation. Sushi was bought. Sushi was eaten. (Sushi contains refined sugar; mayonnaise which contains egg; and is eaten with soy sauce which contains wheat protein.)
I'm still stubbornly off caffeine, though one coke each was pounded by my housemate and my wife.
I don't know why, since there's no rational purpose anymore. The whole scheme was pretty much in support of our housemate's attempt to determine whether she has a milk protein allergy, and if there are any other allergies which contribute to that. Since it's easy to test for a milk protein allergy (Doctor's advice: "Go to the store and get some lactaid. If you don't react to that, you're just lactose-intolerant. If you do react, you have a milk protein allergy."), it's not clear how a multiple-food-elimination diet would help.
And dropping caffeine cold turkey has got to be one of the world's worst ideas.
But I continue in my caffeine-free state. It doesn't make any sense, since I really do like coffee.
In the meantime, I've been drinking lots of double-strength generic mint tea (IGA brand). My wife claimes this makes my breath smell like cheap pot, annoying her terribly. So I guess there is a minor bonus in it for me.
Suppose someone offered you a drink of a pleasantly hot beverage and said, "Here, drink this. It will give you a feeling of increased energy. For the next two days you will have a splitting headache. You will wantonly try eating and drinking anything you see, just on the off chance that it contains the substance you need to cure your headache." You'd be a fool to drink it, wouldn't you?
Perhaps it is obvious that I am suffering through caffeine withdrawal. This was an expected consequence of the multiple food elimination diet that we began on Tuesday. What's unexpected is the unusual severity of the symptoms. I had been under the impression that I'd cut out caffeine before, and the symptoms were never this bad. The inescapable conclusion is that in the past, I've cheated. That really pisses me off.
I distinctly remember the first time I decided to cut out caffeine; it was at a summer job (my first ever) for Evil Health Care Corporation. One of my cow-orkers dared me to cut out caffeine, so I did with little difficulty. Until I realized that there was an enormous and ever-growing mound of Twix wrappers on my desk, and the light bulb flashed on -- chocolate contains caffeine. So attempt one was a failure.
Since then I've cut back several times, but in retrospect I've never cut it out before. I did a substance-free year (easy) but somehow caffeine wasn't a "substance". Hey, I was in school -- how could I expect to live without caffeine?
Every other time I've cut down on caffeine or cut out caffeine entirely, I must have reintroduced coffee at a low level sometime during day 2 or 3. Last time I cut out caffeine was only a few weeks ago, but a lot of work needed to be done in the run-up for the conference, so it was a bad time for me to spend twelve hours a day in the fetal position. So I started up again.
This time it's all three of us: me, my wife, our housemate. On Tuesday afternoon we literally sat around the kitchen for two hours complaining about our headaches and sarcastically offering each other Coke (them) and coffee (me). Sounds like a real party, I know. This is the morning of day 3. Mild headache.
The funniest effect is the "tasting" impulse. Here's a banana -- try it, it might have caffeine in it. No. Yuck. Anyone want a banana with just one bite out of it? Perhaps (though I don't know anything about this), this is an additional reason people quitting smoking tend to gain weight. Not only have they stopped ingesting nicotine, an appetite suppressant; not only have they stopped their major oral fixation; but their body is manipulating them to eat food on the off chance that a dietary source of nicotine will be found.