PETA has sent a letter to the co-founders of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream urging them to replace the cow’s milk they use in their products for, ahem, human breast milk.

PETA claims human breast milk would cause less suffering for dairy cows and would make a healthier choice for humans. For their part, Ben and Jerry’s say they applaud PETA’s novel approach — but believe a mother’s milk is best for her child only.

The collective intelligence of PETA continues to astound. First, let’s release lab animals who have no chance to survive in the wild. Then let’s not milk dairy cows, so they’ll burst an udder and die. Now let’s substitute breast milk for cow’s milk. “Excuse me, waitress? I need more cream in my coffee!”.

Just imagine the logistics… How many gallons of milk does America go through every day? How much does an average lactating woman produce, and how many are lactating at any one time? I think there’s a supply chain shortage here.

All this goes in the same vein as animal testing. I’m against NEEDLESS animal testing. 3000 rabbits do not need to die to test the latest shade of Maybelline lipstick. However, I’d really prefer they did try newly engineered drugs on animals or convicts before using me as a guinea pig.

I do have a solution for those anti-animal testing basket cases: Let’s just not let them use ANY products that are tested on animals. “Oh, you have cancer? Sorry, we killed some mice testing this stuff. You can’t have any. And you’ve got about 2 weeks to live, so you may want to wrap things up.”

[PETA letter, TMZ]

Although a couple times I have bounced back up to 172 for a day or two at a time, over the last 6 months, I’ve generally stayed right around 170.

And although the official number is 43 pounds, checking the records at my doctors office, I see that I was at least up to 220 at some point. It’s ridiculous to be that heavy.

I’ve been asked how I did it. The answer? A rather trivial one: Eat less. If you eat less than you burn, you lose weight. If you eat more than you burn, you gain weight. So I limited myself to 1500 calories a day; a “smoothie” made with cinnamon, strawberries, and two scoops of protein powder in the morning, typically a Lean Cuisine entree for lunch, an apple in the mid-afternoon, a light dinner, and a Weight Watchers ice-cream bar at night. I also started walking 1.25 miles a day in the mid-afternoon (typically all 4 of us at work go), although with the temperatures in the 90′s the last couple months, we’ve forgone that.

Some days I eat too much, and I bounce up a little. I don’t let it stress me, I just make sure I don’t keep eating like that.

A number of times I’ve been to Wal-Mart or the grocery store, and I’m appalled at these morbidly obese people pushing their shopping carts around loaded with junk food. The worst are the ones who as soon as their out of the Wal-Mart light up their cigarette, and have young children with them. I suppose like a reformed smoker, there’s nothing worse then a reformed fatty.

I know I feel better than I used to. While I’m not into exercise, I don’t wheeze after walking up the driveway to the mailbox. And while I don’t have rock-hard abs, I can at least look down and see my toes without leaning over.

I have two friends to thank for this, too. One of them weighed 270, and lost 90 pounds. That’s one third of his body weight. The other lost 30 pounds or so, just by eating better. I figured if they could do it, I could do it, and I was just plain tired of being fat.

Oh, and the “FAA standard person”? It used to be 170 pounds. Now with all the fat Americans, it’s been raised to 185.

Now that WordPress is installed and running, I’ll spend a bit of time seeing how the default theme is.  If it proves less than ideal, I’ll try the ‘Clean and Mean’ theme.

I’ll also be moving some blog-like content from the wiki and back-dating it.