Me--part of the elite?

Jonathan Chait writes,

[Partisanship scolds] are people who believe that disagreement is the central problem in U.S. politics, that both parties are to blame in equal measure, and that rejecting party ties or ideology is synonymous with the demonstration of virtue.

...partisanship scolds are extremely vague about which chunk of Americans is being left out by the growing extremism in Washington. It is true that some broadly popular views are underrepresented in national politics. A detailed political typology released by the Pew Center in 2005 showed that Democratic voters are not as socially liberal as their leaders and Republican voters are not nearly as economically conservative. So there is a sizeable base of socially traditionalist, economically populist voters to be had. Unfortunately, the partisanship scolds invariably cater to exactly the opposite demographic: elites who favor free trade, open immigration, cutting entitlements, and social tolerance.

Although I've never complained about partisanship, I too "favor free trade, open immigration, cutting entitlements, and social tolerance". Does that make me part of the elite?

Who runs the Chinese military?

As China converts its growing economic power into military muscle, a lack of transparency and a habit of secrecy pose formidable challenges in assessing the country's long-term ambitions, according to defense experts.

For foreign governments and analysts monitoring the Chinese military, one of the biggest mysteries is who is actually in charge.

Nominally, President Hu Jintao, who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, the top military command body, is head of the armed forces, but there is considerable doubt among experts about the extent of the authority that he and his fellow civilian leaders exert over the 2.3 million-strong People's Liberation Army.

...

Doubts about the chain of command in China were heightened in the aftermath of the PLA's successful test of an antisatellite missile on Jan. 11 when most analysts concluded that top officials from the Foreign Ministry and civilian bureaucracy were clearly in the dark about the military's plan to shoot down an obsolete weather satellite.

Despite widespread protest from the international community, it took almost two weeks before the Foreign Ministry confirmed the test.

Other analysts point to an incident in October when one of China's newest conventional submarines approached the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk and its battle group in international waters off Okinawa and was only detected when it surfaced near the American ships.

U.S. officials played down the incident, but some experts questioned whether China's civilian leadership would have sanctioned what could be seen as a highly provocative move.

For some analysts, both incidents could be interpreted as a clear demonstration for Washington of China's growing military capabilities and perhaps evidence that elements in the PLA leadership were less concerned about the diplomatic consequences than their civilian counterparts.

Problematical trade statistics

...researchers estimated that $163 of the iPod’s $299 retail value in the United States was captured by American companies and workers, breaking it down to $75 for distribution and retail costs, $80 to Apple, and $8 to various domestic component makers. Japan contributed about $26 to the value added..., while Korea contributed less than $1.

...

Even though Chinese workers contribute only about 1 percent of the value of the iPod, [according to conventional trade statistics] the export of a finished iPod to the United States directly contributes about $150 to our bilateral trade deficit with the Chinese.

William Galvin displays his ignorance

Mitt Romney's been called many things as he runs for president, but chances are "Sticky Rice" isn't one of them.

That's how his name might be read on some ballots, according to state Secretary William Galvin.

Galvin says the federal Justice Department is pressuring Boston election officials to translate candidates' names into Chinese characters in precincts with prominent Chinese-speaking populations.

But there's more than a little lost in translation, according to Galvin.

Since there's no Chinese character for "Romney," translators have resorted to finding characters that most closely match the sound of each syllable in the name.

The problem is that there are many different characters that could be used to match the sound of each syllable, and many different meanings for each character.

So Mitt Romney could be read as "Sticky Rice" or "Uncooked Rice." Fred Thompson might be read as "Virtue Soup." And Barack Obama could be read as "Oh Bus Horse."

Galvin's own name could be read at least two different ways, as "High Prominent Noble Educated" or "Stick Mosquito."

But perhaps the most perplexing translation would be for Boston Mayor Thomas Menino's name, which could be read as "Sun Moon Rainbow Farmer" or "Imbecile," or "Barbarian Mud No Mind of His Own."

"To try to make rhymes or approximations in Chinese, you can have unintended negative meanings," Galvin said. "It leads to confusion. You can render it with a good meaning or a bad meaning."

To add to the confusion, Galvin said, the ballots have to be offered in two major Chinese dialects, Mandarin and Cantonese, leading to even more potential variations of candidates' names.

But advocates for minority voting rights say Galvin's objections are misdirected. If the translations are awkward, they say, the candidates should be free to offer variations, or look to the way Asian language newspapers already transliterate their names.

As the article points out, these people already have names. I found these on the internet:

• Mitt Romney 米特• 罗姆尼 Although 米 mǐ does mean rice, it's also a surname in Chinese.
• Fred Thompson 弗雷德•汤普森 or Fred Dalton Thompson 弗雷德·多尔顿·托马斯. Yes, 德 dé is "virtue" and 汤 tāng is "soup", but 弗雷德 is the standard way to render "Fred" and 汤普森 is the standard way to render " Thompson" (as in "Emma Thompson", for instance).
• Barack Obama 巴拉克·奥巴马 Obama's last name is Ào bā mǎ, where "ào" means "inside" "mysterious", but is used in many names. "Bā" does not mean "bus" unless it's bāshì 巴士. By itself 巴 doesn't mean much of anything. "Mǎ" does mean "horse", but it also happens to be a surname.
• William Galvin has been translated as 盖文. For once, he nearly gets the translation right. 盖 gài means "cover", and 文 wén means literary, which he has extrapolated to "Noble Educated". The standard transliteration of "William" is 威廉 wēi lián; "wēi" means "authority" and "lián" means "honest".
  
• Thomas Menino is 托马斯．马尼诺. I don't know where the expressions in the article come from.

It seems as if William Galvin has been talking to someone who just started learning Chinese and is overly focussed on the meanings of the characters. Perhaps from that meeting that his name links to above? But the fact is, the Chinese don't pay that much attention to them. People can also make something out of our names. For example, take Bush. Omigosh, it means something. What about Clinton: Ho-ho! Clint means "limestone blocks that make up a limestone pavement." As for Galvin, you could say I was galvanized to write this. I hope he has a better grasp of public policy than he does of these names.

Serve the people 为人民服务

Cameron Diaz apologized Sunday for carrying a bag with a political slogan that evoked painful memories in Peru.

The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated "Shrek" films visited the Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru's Andes on Friday carrying an olive green bag emblazoned with a red star and the words "Serve the People" printed in Chinese, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong's most famous political slogan.

The bags are marketed as fashion accessories in some world capitals, but in Peru the slogan evokes memories of the Maoist Shining Path insurgency that fought the government in the 1980s and early 1990s in a bloody conflict that left nearly 70,000 people dead.

A few Chicago eats

Although I missed the meeting I mention below, we got to Chicago's Chinatown and ate at 重慶樓, 228 W. Cermak Rd., Chicago, IL 60616, 312-842-7818; I believe it's called "Double Li" in English; they have no English Google presence as of now. The other customers were almost all Chinese; always a good sign. The English menu looked pretty much like the Chinese menu, but I didn't make sure of the translations. We got the 蒜茸豆苗 Pea shoots in garlic sauce, 孜然羊肉 cumin lamb (meat was tough but tasty) and 潑辣魚片 spicy fish slices. The servings are pretty generous; we brought back the sauce from the fish. No charge for the rice. It looks like Lao Sze Chuan 老四川 has some competition!

At noon the next day we went to The Phoenix Restaurant 萬壽宮 2131 S. Archer Ave. 312-328-0848 for dimsum. It was OK, but not as good as it used to be; it's been so long that we've been to Chinatown that we didn't realize that inside the mall on Archer there were several other dimsum places, also packed with Chinese, suggesting they're just as good.

Sunday at noon we went to the New Maxwell Street Market and had some Mexican food. The tamales were OK, but the tongue gorditas were a little overwhelming.

Later we went to Devon planning to have some food from the Indian buffets. I know, buffets are often for people who don't know much about food, but anyway, there were few buffets, in fact there seemed to be fewer Indian restaurants than before. We ended up going to the vegetarian Mysore Woodlands 2548 W Devon Ave (773) 338-8160. We got a dosai with potato, which was pretty good, a couple of samosas and an order of paratha which were OK, and I ordered a vegetable curry which was OK, if too sweet for my taste. Although there was no charge for the rice that came with it, the rice was pretty awful. A good thing we didn't order the thali. But the batura we saw someone eating looked pretty good.

Our last night was at Thai Pastry Restaurant 4925 N Broadway St (773) 784-5399. It was a little disappointing; I guessed that as soon as I saw that I could choose any meat to go in my green curry. Also, almost no East Asian clientèle. The curry was passable, although the meat was a little tough and there were also some inedible leaves chopped into it. Although the jasmine rice was good, it cost a dollar a bowl!

Finally Monday morning we went back to Wentworth to get roast duck at Wing Chan BBQ 榮棧 2157 S. China Place (312) 791-9389 to take home. It's not Peking duck; it's Cantonese style, but it's pretty good.

We got there about 7 am and they didn't open until 7:30 am, so first we went down South Wentworth and finally found a breakfast place open where we had 皮蛋瘦肉粥 congee with preserved egg and lean meat. It was a little watery but had good flavor.

Reminder to self: next time stay in Tinley Park or Matteson; I think it'll be easier to get to Chinatown.

"Reservation" at Carbondale, IL Enterprise rent a car

Not having checked Enterprise out beforehand, I'd assumed they were a reputable business, and made an online reservation, which I followed up with a telephone call regarding a Friday 12:30 pm pick-up. The agent said something about there being "more choice" later in the day, but I told him that was my schedule. As it happened, my schedule was changed, and so I made the change to 2 pm online and phoned again on Thursday, and everything was supposed to be OK, but when I called Friday at 1:45, there were no cars at all. I guess that's what less choice means. They told me to check back at 3, when there were no cars. When I found out that over a dozen other customers were in the same situation, I cancelled my so-called "reservation". I had to make other last minute arrangements, and because my departure was delayed, I missed an important meeting.

I'll never use Enterprise again.

Turning food into fuel is a bad idea

"Famine," observes Dennis Avery, the director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues, "is a human society's ultimate failure. Tightening the world's food supply by diverting major quantities of its grain stocks into fuels will drive up the prices of all food. This will inevitably hit hardest at the poorest people in the world's food-shortage regions. This would not be ethical even if there were no other sources of energy."

Then there's this:

one-third of the world's grain is now fed to animals to produce meat. If we're really worried about the world's poor, shouldn't we give up not only SUVs, but brisket, bacon and breasts too? The amount of grain that actually goes into producing a pound of meat is controversial. However, the non-profit consortium of 37 scientific societies, the Council on Agricultural Science and Technology estimates that it takes around 3 kilograms of grains to produce 1 kilogram of meat.

Claims that I can agree with

We don't take steps to redress inequalities of looks, friends, or sex life. We don't grab a kidney from you to save someone's life, even though that health difference was unfair brute luck. Redistribution of wealth has some role in maintaining a stable democracy and preventing starvation. But the power of wealth redistribution to produce net value is quite limited. The power of wealth creation to produce net value is extraordinary. Most of America's poor are already among the best-off of all humans in world history. We should be putting our resources, including our advocacy and our intellectual resources, into wealth creation as much as we can.

I don't see why they can't contribute, but this is unethical!

In August 2004, New York Times ethics columnist Randy Cohen donated to MoveOn.org, which conducted get-out-the-vote drives to defeat President Bush.

Cohen said he thought of MoveOn.org as nonpartisan.

Nonpartisan!! I take "nonpartisan" to mean not partisan; but he's apparently deciding it means free from party affiliation. I wonder how he'd answer the question if it were a question of someone contributing to a group opposed to his causes. Maybe that would make it unethical. And of course practically everyone on the list contributed to Democrats or their causes. Although it's interesting to see that Stephen Hunter contributed to the Republicans.

Note the title of Where Have All the Rock Stars Gone? is a snowclone for Where Have All the Flowers Gone).

While not everyone was willing to concede that rock 'n' roll was art, the media began to treat it as if it were. English majors named [Bob] Dylan their favorite poet, and some poets agreed he should be considered one of their number.

Finally, and perhaps most important, Dylan's lyrics became a major part of the rhetoric of the New Left, less because of what they said about politics than because of what Dylan represented — the power of a generation to express itself...

Even today, the news media are inclined to assume that popular musicians have something to say about serious matters — and many of them do. But the fragmentation of mass culture has meant that they are able to say it to smaller and smaller portions of the population.

The fate of hip-hop may be the best illustration of the increasing marginalization of popular music and its impact on American culture. Hip-hop is arguably the last great innovation in popular music, the successor to ragtime, jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock 'n' roll. All of those forms emerged out of African-American culture and changed the tastes of Americans of all races. Hip-hop also attracted a large audience of young white listeners, but it did not come to dominate public consciousness the way its predecessors had. That has less to do with the particular qualities of hip-hop than with the fragmentation of the market. Most Americans didn't hear the music routinely, so it remained foreign to their ears.

Early hip-hop stars like Grandmaster Flash and Public Enemy were at least as critical of American society as Dylan ever was, and they led some commentators to imagine hip-hop artists as authentic and politically significant spokespeople for poor, urban African-Americans. But in the last 10 years or so, even though hip-hop artists like Jay-Z are popular music's most innovative contributors, the form has become less political, and its performers seem less culturally central.

In a different, more unified market, hip-hop stars might have become leaders like James Brown. As it is, popular music seems headed back to the margins of cultural life, and that is a loss for all of us.

Oh, Boo-hoo. Most of the sixties stars were creations of the music producers, and when we listened to the radio or even went to buy records, we were at the mercy of the industry. Since the political stance so treasured by the author is clearly leftist, it's pretty funny that he's crying over the good old days when corporations, the bugbear of the left, held the reins.

cultural studies = garbage

[Philosopher Richard Rorty] once suggested that science had been established by modern man “to fill the place once held by God” but that it didn’t merit that position; it should be seen, Mr. Rorty said, as having the “same footing” as literature or art, and he suggested that physics and ethics were just differing methods of “trying to cope.”

...

One tendency of pragmatism might be to so focus on the ways in which one’s own worldview is flawed that trauma is more readily attributed to internal failure than to external challenges. In one of his last interviews Mr. Rorty recalled the events of 9/11: “When I heard the news about the twin towers, my first thought was: ‘Oh, God. Bush will use this the way Hitler used the Reichstag fire.’”

Peking Dork now suggests that postmodernism has been established by modern intellectuals to fill the place once held by science but that it doesn’t merit this position. We should see postmodernism as having the “same footing” as sewage or trash. Peking Dork also suggests that literary criticism and cultural studies are just different types of garbage.

And so leftists use 9-11 to whine about how awful the US is.

Why American Chinese food is so bad

...the lackluster Cantonese, Hunan and Sichuan restaurants in this country do not resemble those you can find in China. There is a historic explanation for the abysmal state of Chinese cuisine in the United States. Without access to key ingredients from their homeland, Chinese immigrants working on the Central Pacific Railroad in the 1860s improvised dishes like chow mein and chop suey that nobody back in their native land would have recognized. To please the naïve palates of 19th-century Americans, immigrant chefs used sweet, rich sauces to coat the food — a radical departure from the spicy, chili-based dishes served back home.

But today, getting ingredients is no longer an issue. Instead, the principal obstacle to improving Chinese fare here is the difficulty of getting visas for skilled workers since 9/11...

When authentic Chinese cuisines reach our shores, we can expect a revolution in ingredients and styles that will change the way we prepare food for years to come.

"Getting ingredients is no longer an issue?" Maybe not in the big cities, but most American markets don't offer the truly fresh ingredients that Chinese (and French) cuisine require.

People use information to affirm their pre-existing cultural identities

Ronald Bailey writes,

In the study, "Affect, Values, and Nanotechnology Risk Perceptions: An Experimental Investigation," researchers polled 1,850 Americans about their attitudes toward nanotechnology. Eighty-one percent of those polled had heard nothing at all (53 percent) or "just a little" (28 percent) about nanotechnology. Nevertheless, after being offered a bare bones two-sentence definition of nanotech, 89 percent of respondents had an opinion on whether the benefits (53 percent) of nanotech would outweigh the risks (36 percent). So how could people who know nothing or almost nothing about a new technology have an opinion about its safety? Pre-existing world views, of course. "The driving force behind these snap judgments, we found, was affect: the visceral, emotional responses of our subjects, pro or con, determined how beneficial or dangerous they thought nanotechnology was likely to be," write the authors.

The researchers relying on work by social scientist Aaron Wildavsky divided Americans into four cultural groups with regard to risk perception: hierarchists, individualists, egalitarians and communitarians. Hierarchists trust experts, but believe social deviancy is very risky. Egalitarians and communitarians worry about technology, but think that social deviancy is no big deal. Individualists see risk as opportunity and so are optimistic about technology.

...

Not surprisingly, the researchers found that people who were concerned about environmental risks such as global warming and nuclear power, were also concerned about nanotechnology. However, the Yale Cultural Cognition researchers made another more disheartening discovery. In their poll they gave a subset of 350 respondents additional facts - about two paragraphs -- about nanotechnology to see if more information would shift public risk perceptions. They found that it did. In this case, the more information people had, the more they retreated to their initial positions. Hierarchists and individualists thought nano was less risky, while egalitarians and communitarians thought it was more risky.

...What seems to be happening is that individuals use information to affirm their pre-existing cultural identities rather than evaluate risks in purely instrumental terms. Think now of the scientists, technologists and yes, regulators who have to try to bridge these diverse cultural values. More specifically they have to figure out how to persuade communitarians and egalitarians that technology somehow affirms their values. And this is no easy task.

History clearly shows technological progress that has been absolutely essential to the creation of wealth and health in the West over the past two centuries has generally provoked resistance from egalitarians and communitarians.

Good luck!

The specter of global planning

Vaclav Klaus writes,

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.

...

Due to advances in technology, increases in disposable wealth, the rationality of institutions and the ability of countries to organise themselves, the adaptability of human society has been radically increased. It will continue to increase and will solve any potential consequences of mild climate changes...

As a witness to today's worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:

• Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures
• Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided
• Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants
• Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term "scientific consensus", which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority
• Instead of speaking about "the environment", let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour
• Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction
• Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.

Irrational, self-destructive behavior

Here's a striking fact about crime: A lot of it is almost never lucrative. There's little money in assault, drug possession, or drunk driving, to take some of the main offenses that land people in jail. The same goes for rape, and probably most murder too.

...

Crime is just one of many, many "social pathologies" that are over-represented among the poor: alcoholism, drug abuse, smoking, obesity, illegitimacy, etc. None of these are good escape routes from poverty. So instead of trying to explain why "poverty causes crime" or "poverty causes obesity," it makes sense to look for common causes of poverty and social pathologies.

Like what? In a paper just accepted by Kyklos, Scott Beaulier and [Bryan Caplan] point to a simple candidate: irrationality. People who have biased beliefs about practical matters, and/or exercise poor impulse control, are likely to screw up their lives across the board. So it's hardly surprising that poverty and self-destructive behavior go hand in hand. Rather than being a natural response to poverty, a lot of crime can be seen as objectively self-destructive behavior that happens to have an unusually large amount of collateral damage.

So what's the public policy prescription for that?

Synthetic pesticide residues in plant food are insignificant

[Drs. Bruce Ames and Lois Swirsky Gold] took a systematic look at the chemicals that had been tested on rodents. They found that about half of natural chemicals tested positive for carcinogencity, the same proportion as the synthetic chemicals. Fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices contained their own pesticides that caused cancer in rodents. The toxins were found in apples, bananas, beets, Brussel sprouts, collard greens, grapes, melons, oranges, parsley, peaches — the list went on and on.

Then Dr. Ames and Dr. Gold estimated the prevalence of these natural pesticides in the typical diet. In a paper published in 2000 in Mutation Research, they conclude:

About 99.9 percent of the chemicals humans ingest are natural. The amounts of synthetic pesticide residues in plant food are insignificant compared to the amount of natural pesticides produced by plants themselves. Of all dietary pesticides that humans eat, 99.99 percent are natural: they are chemicals produced by plants to defend themselves against fungi, insects, and other animal predators.

We have estimated that on average Americans ingest roughly 5,000 to 10,000 different natural pesticides and their breakdown products. Americans eat about 1,500 mg of natural pesticides per person per day, which is about 10,000 times more than the 0.09 mg they consume of synthetic pesticide residues.

Even though these natural chemicals are as likely to be carcinogenic as synthetic ones, it doesn’t follow that they’re killing us. Just because natural pesticides make up 99.99 percent of the pesticides in our diet, it doesn’t follow that they’re causing human cancer — or that the .01 percent of of synthetic pesticides are causing cancer either. Dr. Ames and Dr. Gold believe most of these carcinogenic pesticides, natural or synthetic, don’t present problems because the human exposures are low and because the high doses given to rodents may not be relevant to humans.

“Everything you eat in the supermarket is absolutely chock full of carcinogens,” Dr. Ames told me. “But most cancers are not due to parts per billion of pesticides. They’re due to causes like smoking, bad diets and, obesity.”

He and Dr. Gold note that “many ordinary foods would not pass the regulatory criteria used for synthetic chemicals,” but they’re not advocating banning broccoli or avoiding natural pesticides in foods that cause cancer in rodents. Rather, they suggest that Americans stop worrying so much about synthetic chemicals:

Regulatory efforts to reduce low-level human exposures to synthetic chemicals because they are rodent carcinogens are expensive; they aim to eliminate minuscule concentrations that now can be measured with improved techniques. These efforts are distractions from the major task of improving public health through increasing scientific understanding about how to prevent cancer (e.g., what aspects of diet are important), increasing public understanding of how lifestyle influences health, and improving our ability to help individuals alter their lifestyles.

People who fear modernity to the contrary notwithstanding:

Rachel Carson was naive to assume there were “few” natural carcinogens, and she was also naive to assume that evolution had made us “accustomed” to these chemicals. Dr. Ames and Dr. Gold explain why we never had a chance to get accustomed:

Humans have not had time to evolve a “toxic harmony” with all their dietary plants. The human diet has changed markedly in the last few thousand years. Indeed, very few of the plants that humans eat today, e.g., coffee, cocoa, tea, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, avocados, mangoes, olive and kiwi fruit, would have been present in a hunter-gatherer’s diet. Natural selection works far too slowly for humans to have evolved specific resistance to the food toxins in these newly introduced plants.

Of course, our ancestors did develop defenses against toxins. But why assume these defenses work only against natural toxins? Dr. Ames and Dr. Gold don’t buy that assumption:

Humans have many natural defenses that buffer against normal exposures to toxins and these are mostly general, rather than tailored for each specific chemical. Thus they work against both natural and synthetic chemicals. Examples of general defenses include the continous shedding of cells exposed to toxins. The surface layers of the mouth, esophagus, stomach, intestine, colon skin and lungs are discarded every few days; DNA repair enzymes, which repair DNA that was damaged from many different sources; and detoxification enzymes of the liver and other organs which generally target classes of chemicals rather than individual chemicals. It makes good evolutionary sense to conclude that human defenses are usually general, rather than specific for each chemical. The reason that predators of plants evolved general defenses is presumably to be prepared to counter a diverse and ever-changing array of plant toxins in an evolving world.

Dr. Ames and Dr. Gold have also addressed the objection that synthetic pesticides have peculiarly dangerous properties:

DDT was unusual with respect to bioconcentration, and because of its chlorine substituents it takes longer to degrade in nature than most chemicals; however, these are properties of relatively few synthetic chemicals. In addition, many thousands of chlorinated chemicals are produced in nature. Natural pesticides also can bioconcentrate if they are fat-soluble. Potatoes, for example, contain solanine and chaconine, which are fat-soluble, neurotoxic, natural pesticides that can be detected in the blood of all potato eaters. High levels of these potato neurotoxins have been shown to cause birth defects in rodents, although they have not been tested for carcinogenicity.

To repeat, Dr. Ames and Dr. Gold are not suggesting that you stop eating potatoes or fear the plethora of natural pesticides in the produce department. The doses are generally too small to pose a risk. But if, as the scientists estimate, these natural pesticides are 10,000 times more plentiful in your diet than synthetic ones, why worry so much about the chemicals that don’t come from Mother Nature?

A government-contrived phenomenon

Referring to Kimberley A. Strassel's article also cited below, Tom Philpott adds,

The corn-based ethanol boom, a completely government-contrived phenomenon, never had a shot at significantly reducing petroleum use. By all accounts, its energy-saving potential over gasoline is thin -- if not imaginary. Corn ethanol has always been a fake -- and dramatically expensive -- stand-in for real energy-conservation policy.

Although I support any and all efforts to halt the runaway train that is corn ethanol, I fear that the backlash plays into the hands of Tyson and its peers, who hate ethanol because it interferes with the business model of feeding cheap corn to confined animals.

They may well get their wish. Last fall, spurred by high corn prices, U.S. farmers scrambled to plant corn anywhere they could -- on idle land, on land devoted to other crops like soybeans. This summer, provided there's no major weather disaster, they will likely harvest the largest corn crop in U.S. history.

If Congress pulls back support for ethanol, the corn price will likely tumble. Lower prices will mean a windfall for feedlot operators like Tyson -- and will likely spur a slew of government commodity payments to corn growers under the farm bill.

We'll be back where we started: with our government using our tax dollars to prop up corn production.

If you had half a brain, you'd know this

Removing half of your brain will not significantly impact who you are...

Of course, the operation has its downside: "You can walk, run—some dance or skip—but you lose use of the hand opposite of the hemisphere that was removed. You have little function in that arm and vision on that side is lost," Freeman says.

Remarkably, few other impacts are seen.

Mommie Dearest

Parents such as Rosie Costello, who criminally exploit their children for money by forcing her two healthy children to fake mental retardation to collect disability benefits, may be responsible for more juvenile lawbreaking than our society currently recognizes