Gaudete

A Healthy Pizza

There's really no reason pizza shouldn't be healthy to eat, according to this article from the Cambridge University Press. 

This is empirical science following from a reasoned theory: the stuff is just bread, tomato sauce, cheese and some toppings that could include vitamins and dietary fiber. If we made it nutritionally-balanced instead of salt- and fat-heavy, in principle it would be perfectly fine to eat as a stand-alone meal. So, let's try it and see if people like it. Empirically, people did. 

The reformulated pizza is only slightly different in appearance and virtually identical in taste to the original pizza recipe, and is still prepared using traditional Italian baking methods.... 

The pizza was rated very highly for both appearance and taste by both children and adult tasters... Among the children, 46 % rated the pizza as good as their usual one and 35 % rated it better (i.e. 81 % at least as good as), moreover 41 % would eat the pizza instead of their usual one. Most adults (57 %) rated the pizza as good as their usual one, with 20 % better (i.e. 77 % found it at least as good as their usual pizza); 69 % of the adults would buy it instead of their usual one. Most would be willing to pay an extra 50 pence for a nutritionally balanced pizza....

Our study therefore shows that, perhaps contrary to popular opinion, it is perfectly possible to have an attractive, nutritionally balanced meal as a single-item pizza meal.

"An extra 50 pence" is, if I understand correctly, about sixty-seven cents.  

A Thirteen Year Old Man

This is almost two weeks ago now, but in Afghanistan a young man was granted the opportunity to execute his family's killer.

This is framed carefully by the British newspaper as a horrifying specter of abuse.

In a disturbing return to the dark days of the Taliban's first rule, tens of thousands of Afghan spectators flocked to a sports stadium to witness a 13-year-old boy carry out a public execution.... The incident brings to 12 the number of men publicly put to death since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, in the wake of the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. and NATO  forces.

The alarming spike in public executions comes as Western travel influencers post glowing videos on Instagram about their adventures in Afghanistan, even as the UN warns of a rapid human rights deterioration.

The 13-year-old boy shot his family's killer three times in front of 80,000 Afghan sports stadium spectators, after his relatives refused the Taliban's offer to pardon the convicted criminal.

The same story provides details that suggest another interpretation.

The country's supreme court said the victim, identified as Mangal, was guilty of having slaughtered 13 members of the teenager's family, including several children and three women....

The executions are carried out as part of the Taliban’s implementation of 'Qisas', which translates as 'retaliation in kind' – effectively an eye for an eye.... The execution was ordered after a death sentence was passed down by a court, an appeals court and the top court itself, and approved by Afghanistan's supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada. 

The man had been convicted along with others of entering a family home in Khost province and shooting to death an extended family in January 2025.

He had been sentenced to 'retaliatory punishment' for murder after his case was 'examined very precisely and repeatedly', the court said.

'The families of the victims were offered amnesty and peace, but they refused,' it added.

That's actually quite a lot of due process, with the additional step of allowing the victimized family to forgo vengeance and reconcile instead if it wished. No American court would allow the family to waive the state's judgment. Neither would they allow the family to be the ones to avenge their dead. The cult of the state is too strong for either of those things in all of the West. 

One may doubt the quality of the Taliban's courts -- or ours, frankly -- and one may reasonably abhor Sharia law. Nevertheless, the 'eye for an eye' concept is far more ancient than Islam, and this system preserves the centrality of the family in a way that ours does not. One might also add that the Taliban won their sovereignty the hard way, against the USSR and then our own military might. They have the right to do things according to their own ideas: they won that right the same way we won ours. 

I doubt that young man will grow up into a man I could be friends with; our ideals and ways of life are too different for true friendship. I can respect, however, the kind of man he is even at his young age.