A Corporation No Mother Could Love

"Our work in wheat is focused on helping improve wheat productivity, including breeding, biotechnology and improved agronomic practices," said Monsanto spokesman Lee Quarles in a statement.

This sentence says it all, but no, not in the way Monsanto would like. Notice the curious expression, “helping improve wheat productivity.”

First question—helping whom? The wheat? The farmer? The greater good?

Second question—at what is wheat being productive? I sort of know what I do, which is get up, write some stuff, teach a few classes, and hope vainly (and formerly secretly) one day to go viral. But what does wheat do?

The questions go on and on. I knew, though I prefer not to think too much about the matter, that cattle breed—but wheat? And if wheat does breed, do cattle then pollinate? And what’s the deal with the “biotechnology and improved agronomic practices?”

Spokesmen are supposed to speak, which implies communication, but this is a classic example of a sentence that says absolutely nothing. In fact, it’s utter gibberish—which would be OK, if it were spoken. We had a president recently who spent eight years falling into one sentence and then scrambling to get out the other end. It was agonizing to watch, although it also could be amusing. Once, during one of the debates, I was present in a large room of University of Wisconsin students as Bush tried to come to the end of a sentence. He paused, trying to find some light in the dimness of his brain, and the group collectively held its breath. Then a whispered question from somewhere in the room: “is he stoned?”

But the “in a statement” up there at the end of the first paragraph makes me believe that this is not spoken, but a press release. And that’s standard—would you want to be Lee Quarles and have to explain face to face what a genetically modified wheat plant was doing in an Oregon field a decade after your company had stopped testing it?

So the question is, is it intentional gibberish or unintentional? My first instinct was unintentional—the corporate mindset had so settled in Quarles’s psyche that he was first, incapable of logical thought, and second, completely convinced that wheat could breed, use technology, or improve agronomic practices.

Now, I think it was intentional. And I think he must be chortling, up there in Missouri. It’s fun, you know, to practice this bit of mercurial foolishness with the language. I do it frequently, and for the same reasons as Quarles.

Raf (peering inside the refrigerator): Who drank the beer?

Marc (practicing for his mayoral bid): First of all, I’d like to thank you for that question, and to say that it’s citizens like you: ordinary men and women, people who get up in the morning and put on their clothes and feed the kids and go to work, you ordinary, good, decent men and women who form the background of our community—it’s people like you, unafraid to ask the hard questions….

Raf (flatly): You drank the beer.

Marc (unstoppable): I’m calling today for an independent, bipartisan commission…

Raf (walks away in disgust)

Repeat that twice a week for thirty years and you have a fair sampling of my marital life. And I am sure that Quarles can do it better than I, since I focus most of my time on writing short and lucid, as opposed to long and opaque. Quarles, on the other hand, spends fifty or sixty hours a week doing just the opposite.

And I hope they pay him well, because he’s gonna be a busy little bee, as things heat up. A Kansas wheat farmer, wonderfully by the name of Barnes, has filed suit against Monsanto, and so we get the following statement.

"Tractor-chasing lawyers have prematurely filed suit without any evidence of fault and in advance of the crop's harvest," said David Snively, Monsanto executive vice president and general counsel.

Right, it might be Snively—and is Dickens making up these names?—who “said” it, but it has Quarles all over it. Notice the nice shift: it’s not the good farmer, standing in his field. No, no—Monsanto is smarter than that! Can you imagine a photo of Barnes standing alone in his field, mopping his brow, squinting into the camera, standing against the wheat field that rolls endlessly and perhaps genetically modifiedly into the distance? And then a picture of the home office of Monsanto? Nope, let’s not go after the farmers, who are anyway Monsanto’s customers / pawns. So Quarles gets Snively to say it’s the lawyers—who rank a bit lower than farmers on the lovability quotient—and then he gets a spark of genius!  

I see Quarles in his office—a large windowless affair—sitting before his computer, wondering how to give this sentence a spin. “Tractor-chasing,” whispers the muse, who then goes off to smoke a cigarette. Quarles grins—she’s never let him down yet.

And Quarles may also have to deal with this, one day:

An amendment inserted into the 2013 Farm Bill passed by the House of Representatives' Agriculture Committee Wednesday would revoke the ability of individual states' lawmakers to pass GMO-labeling laws, food advocates warn.

What does this mean? Well, suppose a liberal, agricultural state like Vermont decides to pass a law requiring that all food sold in the state have a label, saying This product contains genetically modified food products. Would you buy it? Of course not, why should you?

And Monsanto knows that. So we’re going to have a federal law that says that states have no right to require that food is labeled as GMO, or (presumably) even GMO-free.

Now then, did Monsanto actually come out and say, “hey look, we don’t want you to know what’s in the potato salad?” Nope, they got an Iowa representative, Steve King and shame on you, to tweak it as the PICA—Protect Interstate Commerce Act. This isn’t about labeling, this is about interstate commerce, see?

One wonders—was it Quarles who dreamed up the name? Perhaps so, because one critic of the act, Heather White, noted a stylistic similarity:

"This impenetrable language simply means that states would be prevented from regulating just about any agricultural product in commerce," White wrote, adding that, "This sweeping provision would severely undermine all states’ authority to set standards for environmental protection, food safety or animal welfare. It would apply to genetically engineered food labeling, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) regulation, antibiotics use in meat and other local and state food and farm regulations."

It’s one thing to drink all the beer—that’s inadvisable but forgivable. But to modify all the food, threaten a billion dollar wheat market (Japan and Korea have just announced they’re not buying American wheat), and then turn around and sneak a bill into a farm act that would prevent anyone from knowing what they’re putting in their mouths, or —God forbid—their children’s mouths?

Unforgivable.

Big Tobacco, Step Aside

Warning, first off. If you watch the video below, you’ll be in for two minutes of vitriol that, despite all you know of emotional hijacking, will leave you shaking with rage.

Now then, here’s how it started. I wrote a post about guns recently, in which I stated that some gun owners are amping up the rhetoric to fairly high levels. So much so that a college professor wrote an op-ed for the Charleston Gazette; here’s the quote I used:

In a bizarre op-ed in The Charleston Gazette last week, journalism professor Christopher Swindell argued that the National Rifle Association “advocates armed rebellion against the duly elected government of the United States of America.”

I went on to say that the new president of the NRA, Jim Porter, had called Obama a “fake president,” though I didn’t say, as did Swindell, that the NRA had called for an armed rebellion. I did say that the one motivating emotion associated with the gun owners I had spoken with was fear.

A reader reacted in disbelief through Facebook—was I serious? And that set me thinking—what is it about guns? Having a talk about abortion is tea party conversation next to the typical discourse on gun control.

So I got curious—what happens when you shoot a gun? Do you get a rush? What goes on neurologically? Well, the last gun I shot was a BB gun, so I turned to somebody with more recent, and authentic, experience.

Yo, Eric, step into the blog!

“Depends on the caliber,” said Eric, after I had posed the question. He then went on to give me the advice about preparing / preventing kickback. Then he wanted to know, “what are you thinking of shooting?”

Well, we went on to have an interesting conversation. He thought it was possible, suspected dopamine was at play, and mentioned video games and gambling machines.

Bang on, Eric!

In the wake of recent tragic events, there have been a raft of articles about new reasons for gun-control and the psychological make-up of mass murderers (See NYT or WSJ), but the authors of this piece (co-authored with neuroscientist James Olds) believe there’s a critical component missing from this discussion: the very addictive nature of firearms.

That’s Steven Kotler, writing in Forbes Magazine. And let me say this up front: the following is conjecture, a theory.

But Kotler and Olds also believe that dopamine might have a role, and they too adduce the large amount of research on first-person shooting video games, which leads to increased levels of dopamine. (Tangentially, by blocking the reuptake—just what the SSRI antidepressants do.) And what does dopamine do? In the brain, it’s an upper, a motivator. We feel pleasure, excited, and eager to explore the world. Oh, and what drug floods the brain with dopamine? Cocaine, the most addictive of all.

The problem? The first hit of dopamine is always the best. So the brain seeks higher and higher of whatever the addiction is—cigarettes, booze, cocaine, shopping—to get that initial high.

Second, well, let the authors explain:

Two things make this even more alarming. First, because the human brain evolved in an era of immediacy—when threats and rewards were of the lions, tigers and food variety—the dopamine circuitry has an inborn timing mechanism. If the reward follows the stimulus by roughly 100-200 milliseconds, it’s sitting in dopamine’s sweet spot. Firing a muzzle loader—for example—would certainly release dopamine, but it takes too long between multiple firings for a significant reward loop to be created. Firing an automatic weapon, though, sits close to the sweet spot—an assault weapon can fire a round every 100 milliseconds. Meaning not only are guns addictive, but automatic weaponry is far more addictive than most.

Well, as I said, all of this is conjecture. What about anecdotal evidence? I googled “gun addiction,” and came across thefiringline.com, which bills itself “the leading online forum for firearm enthusiasts.” Here’s a sample:

Is there a 12-point program for gun addiction?? I retired two years ago and firearms and shooting has become my major hobby and obsession!! In the past 24 months I have purchased on average one gun a month. Now I have traded some that I already had but my purchases seem to be growing exponentially. I enjoy buying a new gun as much as shooting them.

I can't pass a gun shop without checking it out. I go to Cabelas and Bass Pro every week to see if they have anything new. Whenever my wife and I travel the first thing I do is check out the local gun shops. I go to every gun show within a 200 mile radius and that's at least one a month. I spend probably 2 hours a day online searching auctions and forums.

My wish list grows daily. Now, I have sufficient discretionary income to support this addiction but if things continue at the current rate that could be at risk.

Please tell me that I'm not alone and this behavior is perfectly normal. Is there such a thing as firearms obsessive- compulsive disorder and how do you treat it???

Best answer? Get a wife with a shoe addiction, and you’ll never have a problem.

Lastly, I turned to another source, Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone. Here’s what he has to say:

For the moment, that strategy is paying handsome dividends. Handgun sales have jumped 70 percent since 2008, racking up an estimated $1.5 billion in sales last year. Powerful pistols – sold under brands like Beretta, Glock and Ruger – have replaced traditional hunting guns as the industry's cash cow. Revenue from assault rifles is growing at an even faster clip – having doubled in the past five years, to $489 million. Gaudy profit margins have become the norm: Top gun makers enjoy gross profits of 30 percent or more. Ammunition manufacturers, too, boast of being fat and happy. And it's no wonder: AR-15 enthusiasts brag they can fire up to 400 rounds in 60 seconds. Paying roughly 50 cents a bullet, such shooters are blowing through $200 worth of ammo in a hot minute.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gun-industrys-deadly-addiction-20130228#ixzz2VM6g4vPV

Well, if it’s true that assault rifles fire at a rate that’s within dopamine’s “sweet spot,” then it’s no wonder that they’re selling so well. And if a little addiction isn’t enough, how about this?

For a younger generation raised on graphic video games, shooting at paper targets or "plinking" bottles and tin cans doesn't carry much appeal. So the industry has come up with some new ways to make shooting more like playtime. A firm called Zombie Industries manufactures life-size mannequins for target practice. Some models "bleed" fluorescent goo when shot. Others respond to gunfire in a more lifelike fashion, opening up gaping chest wounds and "bursting into little pieces of blood-soaked zombie matter when you shoot them." The manufacturer offers a wide line of "zombie" targets, including "the Terrorist" – an undead bin Laden – and, more troubling, a blood-soaked, buxom woman-target called "The Ex."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gun-industrys-deadly-addiction-20130228page=2#ixzz2VM8EYnQP

I rest my case.

Step up to the plate, guys!

What happened?

The feminist movement peaked in my middle teens; I remember reading The Second Sex when I was fifteen or so. When I was eighteen, Brownmiller came out with her classic work, Against Our Will, which had a famous, and very controversial statement, coming to you here through Wikipedia:

Brownmiller argues that rape had been hitherto defined by men rather than women, and that men use, and all men benefit from the use of, rape as a means of perpetuating male dominance by keeping all women in a state of fear.

As a gay man, it seemed pretty hard, that phrase “all men benefit from the use of,” but reading the book several times helped get it clear. Her point, if I remember it correctly, is that all women live in a state of fear, of some degree of intensity; it’s part of the warp and weft of our society. And that fear is used, consciously or not, to men’s advantage.

It was an invigorating time, a time of political correctness that I miss, in a sense. Women burning bras? Well, that was women taking back their bodies; no, I’m not gonna be uncomfortable to please you. Women boycotting beauty contests? Hey, has any guy ever stood up in a scanty thong and paraded his ass around a stage for the world to see? Oh, and then get asked how they would solve world hunger?

So for a few years women said to men, “it’s fifty / fifty, buddy; you clean the bathroom, I’ll clean the kitchen….”

Then, all of a sudden I began to hear the first chinks, “I’m not a feminist,” women would say, “but I do believe in equal rights for women.”

This message was puzzling. I had no problem with being a feminist—I considered myself one, although whether that was possible was argued among radical theorists. But if they wanted me, I was willing to be in their trenches.

Then it appeared men were subtly pushing back, and women were retreating. About that time, I moved to Puerto Rico; my finger was off the cultural pulse of the United States. But I can tell you that—always with exceptions—women in Puerto Rico were not faring well. My first reaction, seeing them going to work, was, “hunh? Who goes to a party at 9AM?” Wearing three-inch stiletto heels for eight hours a day seemed a little over the top.

They were especially not doing very well, because many, many of them were working eight hours a day, picking up the kids from Mamita, grabbing “food” at KFC, studying with the kids until nine PM, doing a load of wash, organizing clothes and food for the next day, and falling into bed, for six hours sleep. They did this for five days; Saturday they cleaned the house.

Nor, I’m sorry to say—and again with exceptions—was the average Puerto Rican guy much use. Look, my father and mother had this deal going: he would go out and deal with the world; she would stay put and deal with the house and kids. They modified it, tweaked it, but he was always there, and holding up his share of the bargain. Puerto Rican men tend to marry at age 18, and then drift off by age 23.

So all of this was in my mind when I saw a clip on CNN about revenge porn. Right, I live in a different age—I know that—so I had to check it out: what was revenge porn?

You’re a young woman, you’ve had some wine, you’re back home, undressing with your boyfriend, who takes—perhaps with your permission, perhaps not—a photo of you, appearing not as you usually present yourself to the world. But that’s OK because you trust him, and he would never do anything to harm you, and…

Three years later, you break up. And what does the guy do? Goes on to a website and posts your picture, with your name, last name, and telephone number.

It can get worse. That gray-haired lady you call “Mother?” She gets an email with the heading, “your daughter is a slut.” The boss gets one, too. Oh, forget the boss—you don’t have one because this cyber criminal has put the photos over your Facebook page and guess what? Every recruiter is checking Facebook. So no job for you!

You were stupid, of course. You should never have allowed him to take the picture. Your passwords—of course you shouldn’t have shared them. You were also young, and he weighed 200 pounds, you weighed 110. So that bottle of wine hit you harder.

And as a victim pointed out, statements like the ones above—however true—are just victim-blaming, the equivalent of “what were you wearing at the time of the attack?”

Much of this happened to a woman, Holly Jacobs, who has spent four years trying to get her photos taken off websites, who has taken her aggressor to court in a civil suit, and who has started a website called endrevengeporn.com. She has also started a petition, which I’ve just signed, to make this form of harassment a crime. Here’s the link: http://www.endrevengeporn.com/petition.html

Maybe it’s time to go back to Brownmiller, regain some of that militant fervor, restart the work of raising boys, not future predators.

It may also be time to hear male voices speaking up and claiming, as the TED speaker below does, that “women’s issues” are also men’s issues. Molly Jacobs presumably has a father—is he unaffected by this “women’s issue?” Is he gonna snigger when someone calls a woman a “slut?” Wink, when someone puts a hand on a woman’s rump?

Maybe it’s time to be responsible, guys.

Added Value

....as we used to say at Wal-Mart. 

Thanks, Readers, for getting Iguanas over the 20,000 hits mark. And thanks, Susan, via Facebook, for this clip!

When she doesn't show up

I liked her book; Jeanne didn’t.

“I found it indulgent,” she said. “I mean, it may just be me, but very few women have the resources to go off to three parts of the world for four months at a time and then come home and write about it….”

So you’ll have guessed, I’m talking about Elizabeth Gilbert, whose book Eat, Pray, Love was a mega hit. How mega, you ask? Well, according to Gilbert’s website, the book sold over 10 million copies, and was translated into over 30 languages. For all of that, Time made her one of the 100 most influential people of the year. Oh, and Julia Roberts starred in the movie.

So that presented a problem: what in God’s name do you write after that? And people started coming up to her and asking, “aren’t you afraid that your next book will flop?”

Which made Gilbert question—what’s with the myth of the fucked-up artist? More, why do we buy in to it so much that many of us are, in fact, fucked up?

Well, you can hear Gilberts thoughts on the subject below—and yes, she’s bright and funny and articulate. More to the point, she may be right.

It comes down to this—anybody who has every done anything creative has felt that chilling feeling: “who’s writing this? Who’s playing this? Am I writing or taking dictation? Am I dancing or being danced?”

I felt it first, and strongest, on 4 January 2011; I had written, or rather rewritten, the epilogue of my book, and I was in a fever of creative sweat. Taí, here at the time, was supervising the computer guy, who needed my MacBook to check about something on my iTunes. I passed the computer over and raced to a spare laptop, repeating the last line I had written so that I could go on.

I felt it various times since then. Some days the muse comes, some days I am a journeyman; the post yesterday was good, today’s less so. OK—it was somebody else’s turn to get the muse—there are other writers, you know.

And I also like what Gilbert says—if we are just scribes, that takes a lot of pressure off. The book bombed? The post stank? Not entirely all my fault….

Curiously, this notion seems to be akin to the preoccupation of another writer, though he may consider himself a singer. Ian Bostridge is fascinated with the hundred years or so when rational, intelligent thinkers went from believing in witches, demons, succubae, and the devil to not believing in any of that. People knew no more than they had previously; there was no test or technology or philosophical argument that had disproved the existence of the paranormal world.

People had simply decided to invest in another theory—the rational world. The cow died in the village—it was no longer a witch who had entered the cow and poisoned her; it was something in the air, something she ate, some physical illness that, if we didn’t know now, one day we would.

Bostridge wonders, first, why? What prompted this sea change of thinking? He also wonders whether it’s rational. And, in fact, not all of us have bought on—it was usual for my Evangelical students to tell me that so-and-so had a demon: that was the reason the guy had shot up the movie house, or blasted the kids into infinity in the school.

Conversely, there are any number of people who are convinced: angels are all around us. And even some very rational people believe in them. Once, my philosopher friend Harry was taking his 18-year old daughter to be interviewed for admission at the Art Institute of Chicago. They were late, they were lost, and they were trying to orient themselves, when a woman showed up, as if out of nowhere.

“Where do you need to go,” she said, and Harry said her speech was pressured, the words spilling out. She was looking at them with a peculiar intensity, her upper body pressed in slightly toward them.

“Here, I’ll take you,” she said rapidly, and grabbed Chris’s hand. She almost ran with them to the Institute, and then disappeared as fast, and as mysteriously, as she had appeared.

“She was an angel,” said Harry to his daughter, and he meant it.

There are also the documented cases of spirit possession in Haiti in the Voodoo (Vodou) rituals. Actually, aren’t there cases of spirit possession in all religions? People whirling into ecstasy, people talking in tongues, people seeing visions—not much normal goes on in the religious world….

Lastly, I think it’s the very randomness of the process that make the case for there being a muse. I was just as rested, just as focused, working just as hard on Sunday, when she came as I was today, when she was off somewhere else. She’s promiscuous, that lady who is now caressing some other writer’s ear, who has chosen another body to dance in. Which may be a good thing. If she stayed all the time, would I get bored with her? Could I sustain the pressure of working non-stop, batting out her words? Isn’t that the definition of mania?

Everybody needs just an average day.

Treason, Anyone?

Readers will know—a group of people and I have been reading 30,000 randomly generated names for weeks now. Why 30,000? That’s the number of people killed by gunshot every year; using information from the CDC, I compiled a list of 720 pages.

I had been nervous about doing the reading, since I don’t do confrontation well. And I had thought that I would run into a lot of NRA supporters. So in all these weeks of talking to people, how many card-carrying NRA members have I spoken with?

Two.

And I have spoken to many, many people. So what’s the story? Yes, I am in Puerto Rico, but there are many tourists here. There are days, in fact, when two or three cruise ships come into the harbor—the city becomes Des Moines, linguistically and culturally.

The two cases of pro-NRA folk were identical; they were white, middle-aged men. They didn’t want to talk, one saying frankly, “I’m not interested in your views,” after I had asked him why he was in favor of the NRA. The other engaged briefly in debate, but declined to sit in front of the camera and give his point of view.

Generally, I would prefer to be wrong rather than right—you learn something. And if someone can tell me, for example, why gun shops require background checks but gun shows do not, I’m willing to listen.

And I started out this project wanting to know—what is it that fuels this debate about guns and gun control? What is it that stirs such strong feelings on both sides?

I’m hard-pressed to think of a more potent symbol than a gun. Yes, I considered briefly the image of Christ on the cross, or the swastika (please note—I’m not likening the two) or the sickle and hammer. Strong, yes—but as strong as a gun?

And I’ve come to believe—the NRA advocates, based on my brief encounters personally and my longer encounters electronically, are deeply fearful people.

And whom do they fear?

The government.

They see their guns as the only thing stopping the government from tyranny. And I’ll go further.

They see their world disappearing. There’s a black guy in the White House. Gay people are getting married, and Spanish is spoken everywhere. Hillary may well be president in 2017, and that will drive them nuts.

They see their guns as protection, and each day brings with it added urgency; more need for bigger, more destructive weapons.

But there’s a problem. And a journalism professor at the University of Kentucky brought it out, as reported by the Daily Caller:

In a bizarre op-ed in The Charleston Gazette last week, journalism professor Christopher Swindell argued that the National Rifle Association “advocates armed rebellion against the duly elected government of the United States of America.”

Bizarre? How so? The most extreme gun advocates quite openly state—their guns are their defense against the government. And how far is it that defense become offense?

A Libertarian wants to get 10,000 people carrying loaded weapons to march through Washington DC on the Fourth of July. He says it will be peaceful, but who knows? To me, it’s a pretty provocative act.

It’s also provocative to argue, as the new president of the NRA has, that Obama is a “fake president.” In olden days, it would be called unpatriotic; I still think it is.

People are reacting to a series of threats to our liberties. The media calls it fear. That’s not it, that not it. It’s a sense of rational outrage that’s been building for a very long time. It’s not going to diminish. It’s not going to go away….

I hear some Americans say with the last election the country is lost. No. No. An election was lost. There’s another election more important to the Second Amendment right around the corner. With the U.S. Senate and the House up for grabs, we as individual N.R.A. members can direct the massive energy of spontaneous combustion to regain the political high ground. We do that, and Obama can be stopped.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/05/jim-porter-and-the-nras-challenge-to-america.html

That was Porter speaking recently at the NRA national convention, and it’s clear—the NRA is playing out the demagogue’s favorite trick: create a false crisis and stir up the masses.

God save us all.

Bucky to the Rescue!

No, no, no, no, no—I had intended to take the weekend off. I had met, you see, my goal—or very nearly so. It had taken a year for this blog to reach 10,000 hits. It had taken six months to reach (almost) 20,000 hits. Given that there are no busty blondes with bouncing boobies in this respectable venture, that’s not bad.

Well, there’s no rest for the weary, as the adage has it. Susan dropped in, electronically, to tell me that my blog is being reposted in Democratic Underground. Great—checked that out, came back negative, but did come upon the following headline:

Far-Right Extremists Chased Through London by Women Dressed as Badgers

OK, as much as some part of my brain screamed ‘NO,’ another part was reflexively hitting whatever nerve rules the right index finger, which responded with a click. So here, Dear Readers, are the comely but still respectable women dressed as badgers….

Well, I’m from Wisconsin, which is, as you know, the Badger State. In fact, we even have a song about it, called “If you want to be a Badger, just come along with me.” I give you the video below, for anyone unfamiliar with the song, and for anyone who wants to be nostalgic for student days long past….



OK, let’s be orderly. First question: why are women dressed as badgers (not Badgers) chasing far-right extremists down the street? Well, reading the article gave me the first clue—the women were protesting the badger cull planned by the British government to reduce the incidence of bovine tuberculosis.

Badger cull?

Badgers, Wikipedia informed me, spread widely at night, and their urine contains high concentrations of the bacteria that cause tuberculosis…but wait, I give you Wikipedia itself:

Once an animal has contracted bTB, the disease spreads to other animals in the same group or herd when healthy animals come into contact with exhalations or excretions from infected ones. Modern cow housing arrangements, which have good ventilation, make this a relatively slow process in cattle but in older-style cow housing or in badger setts, it can spread more rapidly. Badgers range widely at night and one infected badger can spread bTB over a long distance. Badgers mark their territory with urine, which can contain a very high proportion of bTB bacteria. According to the RSPCA, the infection rate among badgers is 4-6%.

Wow—this is turning into an interesting Sunday morning. Who knew that cows abide in “modern cow housing arrangements?” My impression, from a childhood very dimly visible in the rearview mirror, is that they lived in pens—or was it stalls? Anyway, modern cows are apparently living in arrangements with infinity pools and wood cabinets and stainless-steel countered kitchens. (Perhaps more precisely termed “food preparation activity centers….”) Great to know….

Moving digressively forward, the British government is intending to go and cull—which I presume means kill—badgers. But the British—perhaps being pre-Wisconsinites, or maybe even latent Wisconsinites—have a special love of badgers. In fact, well, here’s Wikipedia again on the subject:

Parliament responded by passing the Badgers Act 1973, which made it an offence to attempt to kill, take, injure badgers or interfere with their setts without a licence. These laws are now enshrined in the Protection of Badgers Act 1992.

Right—trust the British to act firmly and timely (sorry, but isn’t “timely” already an adverb? Why do I have to say, “in a timely manner?”) in an emergency. And also, of course, to take to the streets in defense of their badgers. Anyone can see that. As can you, by watching the second video.

OK—so we’ve got that taken care off. Now why were the badger protesters chasing right-wing extremists down the streets?

The badger protesters had encountered another group of protesters, from the British National Party and the English Defence League—do I need to tell who those guys are? So the good British ladies, their blood boiling on benefit of badgers, gave chase—their second finest hour!

Well, this Badger (not badger) has the answer, which I derived from reading Wikipedia….

Although vaccination is a recognised means to prevent the spread of the disease without killing wildlife, cattle that had been vaccinated would technically fail legally mandatory tuberculin tests, and therefore could not be declared officially tuberculosis-free, which is required by a 1964 European Economic Community directive.[7] Given that there is as yet no bovine tuberculosis vaccine for cattle that does not interfere with the tuberculin tests, such vaccination is prohibited under EU law.

Guys? There’s a vaccine for cattle against tuberculosis, but giving it would mean that the cows would violate a “directive” meant to achieve the same thing as the vaccine? So now you’re gonna kill a third of the badgers? Go to the damn European  Economic Community and get the “directive” redirected, or dedirected / undirected / disdirected.

Well, I started out laughing at the wonderful inanity of it all, but now I’m mad. Dammed mad. Arise, Badgers, badgerphiliacs, animals lovers everywhere! Send this post everywhere! Spread the news. Get Bucky’s message out!

Hands off my bros, boys!

Fertile Fields

This being a decent blog, I can’t repeat what I said when I saw them, that day with Harry, but it was something like, “what the fuh…?”

Harry was driving; we were on the highway to Ponce, the island’s second largest city. And right there, where Santa Isabel should be, was this:

Yup, 44 windmills in a plain between two mountains. Quite a cite / sight it was, and a bit difficult to overlook.

“They’re completely worthless,” said Harry. “They’re not producing any energy, really. It was another stupid plan of your governor….”

It was a joke—OK, maybe the slightest of jabs. Harry favors independence, but fears gravely that I am a statehooder.

“I’m not surprised,” I said, “that it’s not producing any energy. I tried for years to get Wal-Mart to install windmills, and the sustainability guy told me there’s nowhere on the island with enough wind.”

Actually, if memory serves, the only place with enough wind was alongside of the expressway we were driving on. Cars moving at 65 miles per hour create a lot of air movement.

We had been talking, Harry and I, of the wonderful developments in Puerto Rico. The statue of Christopher Colombus, a monstrosity bigger than the Statue of Liberty, had been shipped off to Arecibo, a town west of San Juan, where it was to be erected. It had been offered to several cities in the US, but curiously, nobody wanted it. Could it be because it looked like this?

“Well, not every statue has to be beautiful,” I said to Harry. And he agreed: there has to be a place for diversity of aesthetics in our society. And went on to tell me that the windmill parts had been stored in his neighborhood, and that each blade was exactly one city block long. He even showed me the block.

“There are two over at Bacardi,” I said, “and one sitting on the municipal dump.”

Right, so Harry had to tell me the story on that.

The governor, wanting to promote this excellent scheme, had erected the windmill on the dump, and they had all watched breathlessly for the majestic white—symbolic for clean and renewable—blades to spin. They were as still as corpses.

Well, that was a problem, but not for long, and not for our governor. What did he do? Rigged it up with electricity, and we now have, as Harry explained it, an enormous fan slowly twirling in public view. See? Instead of producing any energy, it is in fact consuming it….

This made perfect sense, in a tropical sort of way; it was a precise example of a previous, also statehood, governor’s campaign motto: “¿Problema? ¡Resuelto!”

(Problem? Fixed!)

Well, it was a thing to know about, so I looked it up, after I got home. And found that a company, Pattern Energy, had invested 215 million bucks into this project, and were intending to sell the power company 95 MW, enough to power 33 thousand homes.

Yes, and this would be a savings of $13,000 per hour for the company, and thus for us!

Well, the news came out, a week ago. The windmills have been stopped, for the time being. And why? It seems that the turbines have an unfortunate habit—the blades are flying off. So, shut down until further notice.

Fear not, Readers, that we will be sitting in the dark, reduced to rubbing sticks to light the fires to heat our food. For the new director of the energy company—for we have a new governor, so everybody has to change, even the president of the University of Puerto Rico—has just stated what Marc and Harry knew that day in September.

There’s no wind.

The project, in fact, generates all of 3% of the energy on the island. And the turbines are working at only 20% of capacity, not the 40%-50% that is expected. So Pattern Energy, “one of North America’s leading independent wind and transmission companies,” according to their website, has just stuck in $215,000,000 to Puerto Rico, and is getting back…

…what?

“Did García Márquez really say that about Puerto Rico?” I asked Harry. He knew immediately the remark; it’s part of Puerto Rican folklore. When asked why he didn’t write about Puerto Rico, García Márquez said something like, “they didn’t believe me when I wrote about Macondo, so they really wouldn’t believe me if I wrote about Puerto Rico….”

“Absolutely,” returned Harry. 

Good to know. What would I write about, if I woke up and found everything normal?

Monsanto Marches On

Is there anything this company does that doesn’t piss me off?

Look, I worked for Wal-Mart for seven years, and I still shop at Wal-Mart, even after they laid me off. And yes, they get it wrong sometimes; yes, they do colossally stupid things like tell Joe Biden they’re too “busy” to run up to Washington to talk about gun violence. Then everybody jumps on them and they get a guy out there to do the PR stuff—in short to mop up.

And they could be paranoid. The people from DACO, our local consumer protection department, were in the stores at 4AM every Black Friday, watching us—note that pronoun—like a cat hovering over a fishbowl. So why didn’t they check the local toy stores, my students would complain. “Get over it,” I would say, “it’s the price we pay for being number one.”

I’m trying to tell you—I’m not intrinsically against big business. But I’m finding it hard not to be completely annoyed by Monsanto.

This perhaps won’t make anybody in the corporate office in Creve Coeur, Missouri, wince. But they are, I’m sure, wincing at the news that nine years after testing genetically altered wheat, that same wheat turned up unexpectedly in a farmer’s field in Oregon.

Back up for people just coming in on the story. Monsanto was set up in 1901 by a guy named John Francis Queeny—stop that sniggering out there—and named after his wife’s maiden name. Queeny’s father-in-law, in fact, was Puerto Rican, a wealthy sugar producer in Vieques, Puerto Rico. Queeny’s expertise was in pharmaceuticals, and the company’s first product was saccharine.

Over the years, the company produced mainly chemicals. Then it got into herbicides, and struck it rich with a product called Roundup. Introduced in the ‘70s, it was touted as being completely safe and wonderfully effective at killing anything green.

Monsanto then churned its way into the world of genetically modified seeds. And came up with a brilliant idea—they could make a seed that was resistant to Roundup—their very own product—and sell it to farmers. Then, the farmers would plant the crop, spray the hell out of the field with Roundup, which would kill everything but the Roundup-resistant crop. Think napalm, or maybe Agent Orange.

There were predictable glitches, of course, and those damn fussy Europeans got it into their heads that they didn’t want genetically modified food. And what’s wrong with Canada, normally a quiet, well-behaved country? They don’t want the stuff either. Fine, you say, let ‘em. They can eat whatever they want.

Well, there is a problem—we sell half of our wheat, the world’s largest crop, overseas. And if our trading partners don’t want genetically modified wheat, and especially if they don’t trust us not to be mixing genetically modified wheat into the regular wheat—well, we’re screwed.

And yes, Monsanto was doing testing on genetically modified wheat between 1998 and 2005.

You know what’s coming. A farmer in Oregon was preparing a field that had been lying fallow for the upcoming planting. There were a few stray wheat plants, so he nuked them with Roundup. No luck, try again. And again. So sometime in early May of this year he yanked the plants, which looked identical to regular wheat, and sent them to Oregon State. And yes, they were the genetically modified wheat plants that Monsanto had been testing…

…in 2005.

That’s eight years ago. More, here is the list of states in which the testing took place:

Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming. 

Seventeen states, over 100 field tests, and all this approved by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Nor is this the first time. Monsanto, according to one report, in the past 13 years has sued 410 farmers and 56 small farm businesses, almost always settling out of court (the few farmers that can afford to go to trial are always defeated).

Oh, and what’s the size of the problem? According to the same source, thinkprogress.org:

Organic and conventional seeds are fast becoming extinct — 93 percent of soybeans, 88 percent of cotton, and 86 percent of corn in the US are grown from Monsanto’s patented seeds. A recent study discovered that at least half of the organic seeds in the US are contaminated with some genetically modified material.

So that tofu you’ve been eating virtuously—no Big Mac for you—is likely made with genetically modified soy seed. Is it a problem? Maybe, maybe not. We don’t know, but the Europeans, the Canadians have logically decided—why find out? Why be the guinea pigs in Monsanto’s experiment?

All right, let’s turn onto a different, though parallel, street. Remember that stuff, Roundup, that farmers have been dumping on crops since the 70’s? It turns out—it may be making us fat.

According to a peer-reviewed paper published in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) journal Entropy, even small amounts of Roundup can build up over time—one of the researchers compares it to arsenic. There are no effects at first, but then you get sick.

How? Apparently, Roundup contains antibiotic properties, which attack the gastrointestinal microbes that—thanks, guys—digest our food. So that leads to an overgrowth of the pathological bacteria, which in turn leads to absorption problems. So we eat and eat—we don’t feel full.

As well, Roundup interferes with the production of the amino acid tryptophan, which is needed to make the neurotransmitter serotonin, which regulates mood and also—get ready—appetite. So I just ate a tuna fish sandwich—am I OK? Have I just gotten a little zap of Roundup? Here’s the author of the study on the subject:

 “If you are eating the typical Western non-organic diet that includes anything made from corn, soy, canola, wheat, sugar (both cane and sugar beet), cottonseed oil, sunflower, carrots, okra, potatoes, lentils, beans, and peas, or meat, then you’re almost certainly consuming glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup),” notes Samsel.

Still want to defend Monsanto? Consider the list of products made by this wonderful company:

1.     Saccharine

2.     PCBs

3.     Polystyrene

4.     Plutonium for the A bomb

5.     DDT

6.     Dioxin

7.     Agent Orange

8.     Petroleum based fertilizer

9.     Roundup

10.  Aspartame

11.  Bovine Growth Hormone

12.  Genetically modified organisms

Sure is quiet around here….