The LA Times gives you something to choose to believe - or not.
By Melissa Healy, Times Staff Writer Monday, September 6, 2004These are good times for those who grow and sell organic foods. But there may be trouble in paradise.
Prompted by a quest for safer, healthier diets and a cleaner environment, more American consumers are buying the bountiful harvests of organic farmers. Last year, U.S. spending on organic foods reached close to $10.4 billion, making this the fastest-growing segment of the American food industry. Amid scares over mad cow disease, mercury in fish and produce tainted with harmful bacteria, new customers are joining existing ones in embracing organic foods as a sanctuary from harm and a surer route to long life and good health.
But as organic products — and their claims to superiority — have grown more common, scientists, policy analysts and some consumers have begun to ask for proof. Where's the evidence, they ask, for the widespread belief that organic foods are safer and more nutritious than those raised by conventional farming methods?
The short answer, food safety and nutrition scientists say, is that such proof does not exist. Indeed, by one well-established measure of healthfulness — contamination with fecal matter and potentially harmful bacteria — some organic foods may pose greater risks to consumers.
As food fights go, this one might not be as raucous as the cacophony over low-carb diets or reshaping the food pyramid — yet. But since 1989, when organic-food activists raised a nationwide scare over the pesticide alar in apples, many scientists have seethed quietly at what they perceive as a campaign of scare tactics, innuendo and shoddy science perpetrated by organic food producers and their allies.
Now, many of those experts, who had been content to pursue their research in academic anonymity, are being called to testify before congressional committees and weigh in on a swirling public debate about America's diet. As they begin to find their voice, the organic food industry may find them about as welcome as a plague of aphids. And it will take more than cow manure and dried chrysanthemum leaves to make them go away.
Dr. Joseph D. Rosen, a Rutgers University food science professor on the cusp of retirement, is one of the organic food industry's newest pests. For years, Rosen said, he kept his head down, conducting and publishing narrow research on how to measure pesticide residues in food. But he was moved to begin speaking out in 2002, when Consumer Reports inveighed against proposals to irradiate meat — a measure Rosen believes could prevent more then 350 deaths per year due to food-borne illnesses.
Last month, at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in Philadelphia, Rosen presided over a daylong symposium that asked the question: Is organic food healthier than conventional food?
"There's certainly not sufficient science to prove that the claims of organic food advocates are true," he said.
The symposium was the second this year to question the benefits of organic food. In March, the First World Congress on Organic Food convened scientists, farmers and consumer analysts to consider the safety and nutritional aspects of organic food. It too found a dearth of evidence to support claims of superiority.
"We don't have a huge wealth of literature here," said Dr. Ewen C.D. Todd, director of Michigan State University's National Food Safety and Toxicology Center, which hosted the gathering. "It's going to be difficult to say science has spoken," he added.
"This really, truly is a coming of age for the organic movement," said Alex Avery, director of research and education at the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues and a vocal critic of the organic food industry. "They have been legitimized to the point where they're no longer the kooky fringe, and they're now subject to the same intense, microscopic scrutiny that conventional farming has been. This is a mark of their success."
Those meeting under the banner of the American Chemical Society's agrochemical group — chemists, toxicologists, microbiologists and risk analysts — were admitted skeptics to begin with. As lone voices, many have spoken out before. But for what may be the first time, they are raising their voices together.
These critics picked apart studies and reports posted on websites, cited in the media and touted in organic marketing that suggest organic food is a safer and more nutritious choice. They presented data collected by the federal government, studies published in respected journals of food safety and nutrition and, in some cases, results from their own labs to show that differences are, at best, tiny and probably meaningless.
And they traced the growing tentacles of a onetime counterculture movement that has begun to look and act more like an industry dedicated to expanding its market and increasing its influence on controversial issues of food safety and supply, such as bioengineered crops and irradiation of food.
In the process, the skeptics called into question one rationale that drives buyers of organic food. By one recent survey, two-in-three consumers of organic food make their choice believing it will support "better health."
"Right now, the organic movement is fairly strong because it's generally recognized that these products are safer and more nutritious," said Christine Bruhn, director of the University of California's Center for Consumer Research at UC Davis.
But, Bruhn said, the organic business may be in trouble if consumers come to believe that the products are not necessarily healthier for them. "It's a market philosophy that's built on a house of cards. You blow those cards and there might be some tumbling," said Bruhn.
That is especially true because the price tags of organically grown foods are typically higher than those of their conventional counterparts. With some produce — carrots, for example — the difference can be a matter of pennies. But for many products — such as peaches, eggs and dairy — the organic label can add considerably to the bill, sometimes doubling the price.
Sherry Petrie is one consumer who might reach less often for organic products if she fails to get some proof soon.
A 37-year-old mother of five in Inglewood, Petrie calls herself "very health-conscious," and frequently "splurges" to buy organic vegetables, fruits, milk and eggs for her family. She worries about pesticides on produce, fears that hormones fed to dairy cows might be causing girls to race to puberty, and worries about food additives that may add nothing but risk. But she also worries about her family's budget, "and when you have a family as big as mine, you kind of have to pick and choose."
While Petrie often buys organic, "I do question at times" whether the organic label adds anything but cost, she said. In Ralphs, where she usually shops, Petrie finds herself torn between her commitment to buying the healthiest food and the price premiums of many organic products. "I'm asking myself, 'Is it really worth it?' " Petrie said.
The message of organic food's newly outspoken skeptics may discomfort consumers who have been paying premiums for produce and meat raised without synthetic pesticides, fertilizers and antibiotics and without growth hormones. Buy it if you like it, they say, but not because it's better for you.
The group's message to those who raise, sell and promote organic products is a bit less friendly: You are being watched.
That message comes at a time when the organic food industry is stepping up its bid to convince scientific and medical professionals of the health benefits of organic food, a move that will inevitably open their claims to more rigorous scrutiny.
Last year, the Organic Trade Assn., which represents more than 1,450 producers, processors, distributors and retailers of organic products, launched the Organic Center for Education and Promotion. The center is dedicated to providing "consumers, healthcare professionals, educators, public officials and government agencies with credible, scientific information about the organic benefit."
Katherine DiMatteo, acting director of the Organic Center, acknowledged that organic food proponents have just begun to build their scientific case, adding, "it is a long road ahead."
She said many consumers had developed the belief that organic food is safer and healthier for reasons that are "nonscientific." When the public becomes agitated by some new "food scare" — over pesticides, mad cow disease, antibiotic resistance — they frequently learn that organic farmers have taken steps that avoid such pitfalls, she said. That, she noted, positions organic food in their minds as a safer and healthier alternative to conventionally grown foods, even when research is not there to support that presumption. "It's got a lot to do with these food scares," DiMatteo said.
But DiMatteo said that those who produce, process and sell organic foods know that most American consumers — organic food represents only 2% of all U.S. food sales — have yet to be convinced. And even some of their regular customers want to see more and better research findings. That, she added, is why the Organic Center for Education and Promotion was born.
"We're still in a growth phase in building organic, but we also see that part of our base wants to know more about the health benefits and they're waiting for more proof," she said.
Rutgers' Rosen said that consumers who spend more for organically raised foods in the belief that they have more vitamins or fewer pesticide residues and fewer contaminants should understand a few things about the studies that have helped lead them to that belief.
First, he said, most were not designed, conducted or published according to accepted scientific standards, and many were done by groups that openly promote organic foods. One of the most-cited — widely used as evidence of organic food's higher vitamin content — was published in 1948 by Firman Bear, a long-retired Rutgers food scientist who has since acknowledged his study was not designed to assess organic crops nor to compare nutritional values.
Beyond that, well-designed studies that have found differences in organic food — say, in vitamin C content or in pesticide residues — have found differences so small that most scientists say they are not meaningful.
Ruth Kava, director of nutrition at the New York-based American Council on Science and Health, has combed through most of the studies cited in support of the belief that organic produce is more nutritious. At least half of those studies, Kava said, suffer from crippling inconsistencies in how the produce samples were gathered, analyzed and compared. And even where vitamin differences appear to be well-documented, Kava said, they are so tiny as to be insignificant.
Looking at one comparison of vitamin C in a market basket of organic and conventionally grown vegetables, Kava acknowledged a slight edge for the organic crops. But it amounted to a difference of around 10% of the recommended daily intake requirement for vitamin C. For most adults, she said, "I'm not sure it matters," and their consumption of fruits could easily make up the difference.
Differences in pesticide residues are the subject of much fiercer debate.
Synthetically produced fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides used by conventional farmers are subject to extensive regulation. The federal government and, often, states (California is included) have set strict limits on what types and amounts they will allow on fruits and vegetables making their way to market. In most cases, those limits are based on analyses aimed at protecting the most vulnerable or voracious consumers of fruits and vegetables.
Supporters of organic agriculture maintain that synthetic pesticides — even when consumed in tiny doses — accumulate in the body over a lifetime, and may interact with one another in unpredictable ways.
Cumulative pesticide risks are not well understood, these advocates say, and until they are, fewer pesticide residues means less risk. This is especially true, they argue, for infants and children who take in a greater proportion of fruits and vegetables based on their size and who have more fragile immune systems than adults.
"The argument is that less is better than more, even though more may be minuscule," said Todd of Michigan State University. "You can say you've got a better safety margin, even though many other things may overwhelm that."
Advocates of organic agriculture often fail to note that organic farmers also use potentially risky herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers. But the natural compounds that government regulations allow organic farmers to use, including manure, sulfur, copper, pyrethrum (an insecticide made of dried African chrysanthemums), and rotenone (an insecticide derived from the roots of tropical plants that is highly toxic to fish), are not tracked and limited by government regulators, said Christine Chaisson, a risk-analysis specialist with the LifeLine Group, a not-for-profit corporation that develops methods to analyze risk. That, she said, makes it difficult to conclude that organic food poses less risk to consumers than its conventionally grown counterparts.
Last June, the Organic Center released a study, based on data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that found conventionally grown fruits and vegetables were eight times more likely to contain pesticide residues than organically raised crops. But Michael F. Hare, a toxicologist with the Texas Department of Agriculture who reviewed the report for the American Chemical Society's panel, found that, of the fewer than 20% of conventionally grown samples in which a pesticide residue was found, the amount usually fell between 1% and 5% of the limits considered safe by federal government standards. Although organic crops were less likely to show pesticide residues, Hare said at these low levels, neither crop could be declared meaningfully safer than the other.
The belief that organic foods are healthier is most vulnerable when it comes to food contamination issues, scientists have said.
In a year when the federal government has issued contamination warnings for dozens of crops, the safety of organic produce is coming under more intense scrutiny. When it comes to fruits and vegetables, organics have one key vulnerability, which is organic farmers' far heavier reliance on cow and pig manure as a source of fertilizer. And where you have animal manure, particularly if it has not been carefully aged and processed, the risk of contamination by dangerous E. coli, salmonella and citrobacter bacteria is greatly increased.
The Organic Trade Assn. notes that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has set strict standards for organic farmers' use of animal manure. But many farmers who market their products as natural or organic may not always adhere to them, and the safety standards remain a topic of debate among toxicologists. In recent years, at least two outbreaks of E. coli contamination — in strawberries and lettuce — have been associated with organic foods, and alfalfa sprouts marketed in natural foods stores were recalled for salmonella contamination.
In a study published in May in the Journal of Food Protection, University of Minnesota professor Francisco Diez-Gonzalez reported that in a comparison of organic and conventionally raised crops plucked directly from the fields, organic vegetables were more than five times likelier to show fecal contamination — an indicator that produce could harbor harmful pathogens — than were those grown conventionally.
Scientists in Philadelphia last month also took aim at organic poultry, where flocks are often allowed to roam, as an organic product whose contamination rates are higher than those among conventionally grown flocks. Because some flocks raised as organic poultry are exposed to wild birds and their droppings, several studies have found higher rates of potentially harmful bacterial contamination among such birds than among conventionally raised poultry.
In the end, the organic versus conventional contest may have to be settled by consumers' tastes, their budgets, and their commitment to environmental principles. From a health perspective, said Bruhn of UC Davis, it's a contest that pits one set of safe products against another. But it is also, she added, a marketing imbroglio that befuddles consumers and can fill those who cannot afford organic food's premiums with guilt.
"The critical thing is getting good fruits and vegetables and dairy products into the mouths of consumers. People need to use their funds to buy the healthy products their family likes," Bruhn said. In the meantime, she added, let the comparisons — and with them, a new scientific debate — begin. "I look forward to seeing the evidence."
The oh-what-a-surprise cellroom re-recanting of David Irving (and the breathless press commentary in its wake) is a reminder of what a pointless exercise the criminalization of historical opinion is. A bad scholar, and probably a bad man too, but a worse law.
By way of the coffee/latte discussion taking place on the Scottish Newsgroup, I've run into a thought-provoking discussion of Internet communication as a hybrid of past approaches to gathering and sharing words.
How to reconcile this study with these? One conclusion is that conservatives may become happier by giving up on the possibility of being their brothers' keepers. Others?
Though I can't find it now, we've discussed "crunchy conservatives" here in the past. According to 11D, Rod Dreher has just published a book expanding his essay, titled Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party). They've also set up a blog on the subject over at the National Review website.
The IRS has just posted results of its investigation into complaints of improper political activity by tax-exempt religious institutions and charities during the 2004 election season. Due to quick reading I wonder if I'm missing political implications therein. Anyone want to take a closer look?
Via a commenter to Language Hat's thread on corrections today comes this correction from the Virginian-Pilot:
A story and headline in the Dec. 18, 1903, Virginian-Pilot contained errors.Orville Wright was the pilot for the first flight of the Wright Flyer. It was not Wilbur, whose name is not spelled Wilber.
The plane’s wing span was 40 feet, 4 inches. The wings were 6 feet 2 inches apart vertically and 6 feet, 6 inches from front to rear. They were covered in muslin, not canvas.
The engine rested on top of the lower wing. It did not hang below it.
The propellers had two blades each, not six. They both were mounted on the rear side of the wings. There was no propeller providing upward force.
Rudders in the front and rear and warping of the wings controlled the plane. There was not a single, huge fan-shaped rudder that could be moved side to side and raised and lowered.
The pilot lay prone on the lower wing. There was no pilot’s car.
The Wrights have always said they were equal inventors of the machine. Wilbur never took credit as the chief inventor. The brothers had no plans to build a much larger machine and never did.
Their success came after four years of work, not three.
They took one trip to the Outer Banks in the summer and two trips in the fall prior to 1903. They did not spend almost the entire winter, fall and early spring on the Outer Banks for three years.
The correction continues at considerable length. Does anyone know if this was a unique case, or were journalistic standards that much lower in 1903?
Title: Earth Abides
Author: George R. Stewart
Year Published: 1949
Rating: 3 rusty, unlabeled tins of food (out of 5)
Summary: A graduate student misses out on the worldwide plague that reduces the population of the Bay Area to a dozen shellshocked individuals. He founds a new community but utterly fails to preserve civilization among the progeny of the survivors. With the abundance of canned food, nobody can be bothered with herds or crops. Finally our protagonist — whose name is Hebrew for "man" — reduces his aspirations and simply tries to transmit bow-and-arrow technology to his children.
Setting: San "Lupo" Drive, Berkeley, CA
Catastrophe: Plague
Representative Sample:
He drew the arrow back, and loosed it. Unfeathered, it flew with a wobbly flight, but he had pointed it at a high angle, and it covered fifty feet before it struck, by chance, pointing upward from the ground.
Instantly he knew that he had won success. The three children had never seen anything like this before, and they stood wide-eyed for a moment. Then with shouts they broke into a run, and went to retrieve the arrow. Ish shot it for them, again and again.
At last came the inevitable request for which Ish had been waiting.
"Let me try it, Daddy," said Walt.
Walt's first shot wobbled a bare twenty feet, but he was pleased. Then Josey tried it, and then Weston.
Before dinner-time, every child in The Tribe was busy at work whittling on a bow of his own.
An original take on the controversy, as you might expect.
That's how Alan Hogue describes "evolutionary psychology," and it sounds like a pretty accurate summary of Breaking the Spell, by Daniel C. Dennett. According to Leon Wieseltier's delightful review,
"Breaking the Spell" is a long, hectoring exercise in unexamined originalism. In perhaps the most flattening passage in the book, Dennett surmises that "all our 'intrinsic' values started out as instrumental values," and that this conviction about the primacy of the instrumental is a solemn requirement of science. He remarks that the question cui bono? — who benefits? — "is even more central in evolutionary biology than in the law," and so we must seek the biological utilities of what might otherwise seem like "a gratuitous outlay." An anxiety about the reality of nonbiological meanings troubles Dennett's every page. But it is very hard to envisage the biological utilities of such gratuitous outlays as "The Embarkation for Cythera" and Fermat's theorem and the "Missa Solemnis."
It will be plain that Dennett's approach to religion is contrived to evade religion's substance. He thinks that an inquiry into belief is made superfluous by an inquiry into the belief in belief. This is a very revealing mistake. You cannot disprove a belief unless you disprove its content. If you believe that you can disprove it any other way, by describing its origins or by describing its consequences, then you do not believe in reason. In this profound sense, Dennett does not believe in reason. He will be outraged to hear this, since he regards himself as a giant of rationalism. But the reason he imputes to the human creatures depicted in his book is merely a creaturely reason. Dennett's natural history does not deny reason, it animalizes reason. It portrays reason in service to natural selection, and as a product of natural selection. But if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else. (In this respect, rationalism is closer to mysticism than it is to materialism.) Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.
Of course, criticism in a book review is exactly the sort of persecution Dennett expects:
In his own opinion, Dennett is a hero. He is in the business of emancipation, and he reveres himself for it. "By asking for an accounting of the pros and cons of religion, I risk getting poked in the nose or worse," he declares, "and yet I persist." Giordano Bruno, with tenure at Tufts! He wonders whether religious people "will have the intellectual honesty and courage to read this book through." If you disagree with what Dennett says, it is because you fear what he says. Any opposition to his scientistic deflation of religion he triumphantly dismisses as "protectionism." But people who share Dennett's view of the world he calls "brights." Brights are not only intellectually better, they are also ethically better. Did you know that "brights have the lowest divorce rate in the United States, and born-again Christians the highest"? Dennett's own "sacred values" are "democracy, justice, life, love and truth." This rigs things nicely. If you refuse his "impeccably hardheaded and rational ontology," then your sacred values must be tyranny, injustice, death, hatred and falsehood. Dennett is the sort of rationalist who gives reason a bad name; and in a new era of American obscurantism, this is not helpful.Via Amy Welborn
Here's a fascinating bit of point-missing c/o Echidne and our own Demisemi, surely. The issue at hand is the exclusion of women ski jumpers from Olympic competition. It's all, apparently, a question of quack gyneocology, a worry about wombs: "the explanation for this denial hinges on women's reproductive systems." "It's solicitude for their womanly parts that bars brave fit nineteen-year-olds from competing." Which seems pretty silly in this day and age.
Except that it turns out to have not much to do with wombs at all, and much to do with, unsurprisingly, money. It's the International Federation of Skiing (not the IOC) that's holding things up, and the real problem appears to be that the IFC would have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars staging a qualifying world championship when there are only about half a dozen women who are really first-class in the event.
Now is that fair? Perhaps not; after all, if you refuse to allow a group to compete because they're small in numbers then that can be a self-perpetuating problem. Perhaps the IFC should be required to spend the cash anyway. But that's a very different claim (with very different counter-arguments) from saying that it's all about loony old men with a lingering Victorian obsession with the female bits.
Leaving aside the money, Echidne asks:
"Why not have the women who want to jump do it with men if there aren't enough women to compete separately?"
Well, apparently they don't want to, and this is where the presentation of this story as embattled-women-looking-for-nothing-more-than-an-even-chance breaks down a bit. The women ski-jumpers aren't looking for a level playing field (not perhaps the most apposite metaphor in this case, but you know what I mean) because they think it's inappropriate - physiologically. "Advocates of Olympic inclusion for these women fear that the ski federation isn’t considering the physical differences between men and women. "Women aren’t built the same way that men are; that’s the thing we’re battling with," [Alissa] Johnson said, resentful that some of the FIS members judge jump lengths and body-fat content of women jumpers against the men’s longstanding numbers. "We shouldn’t be compared to men." Imagine if it was Alissa's brother Al saying that, and what the reaction would be.
Is Alissa right or wrong? I've no idea. But I'm at a loss to understand why men who complain that the two sexes have different physical capacities are hollered down as absurd relics of a misbegotten age, whereas women who suggest it get a high five and a you go, girl.
Here's a Saturday afternoon wellwhodathoughtit for you: my mailman's mother's cousin is David Batty, the former Leeds FC midfielder who is famous mainly for missing the crucial penalty kick in England's final 16 game against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup.
Interesting comments in the Daily Telegraph c/o Matt T.
There's a weblog called Not Martha. It isn't. But I may yet buy this T-shirt.
Just ran across a link of interest wrt Internet free speech issues, memory holes, and suchlike. It's "Searchblog," a weblog by one John Battelle about the politics and business of search engines. Plentiful material on the Google/Yahoo/China controversies of course, and much else besides. For example, his post is the first I've heard about SBC pulling its ads from our own San Francisco Chronicle over critical coverage by pro-consumer columnist David Lazarus.
Among recent links is the Chinese-language Google China Blog, whose text I do not understand apart from the English-language words "I'm Feeling Lucky," but whose photos are begging for a re-captioning contest, especially the one of a young man limboing through a small hole in a literal net with the help of thirteen other people in Google sweatshirts.
"Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other..." No, it's not Cole Porter either. it's Willie Nelson glossing Brokeback Mountain. Also featuring the line, "What did you think all them saddles and boots was about?" (Pause for chuckles all along Folsom Street.) Country music is more adventurous than it's given credit for. Not just Willie Nelson either.
A new addition to our blogroll. Damn you Brumfield, you just made me squirt soda out of my nose.
Interesting stuff up at Harry's Place today on domestic politics, both here and there.
From the BBC:
"Denmark's Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Monday again tried to soothe the row, insisting his nation was "an open and tolerant society, a tolerant society which respects all faiths"."
I expect Mr. Rasmussen intended 'tolerance' and 'respect' to be synonyms for one another. But they're not, surely? If anything, they're duelling values. Tolerance begets disrepect. Respect begets intolerance. That's not to say that a society can't aspire to both to some degree or other, but it's never going to be anything better than a fragile compromise. Just because both words have a modishly positive ring to them doesn't mean that they reinforce one another. They don't; they're in inherent tension.
Pam Noles discusses racism in sci-fi/fantasy and the miscast film version of a favorite adventure story:
But I remember Dad saying, how come you never see anybody like that in the stories you like? And I remember answering, maybe they didn't have black people back then. He said there's always been black people. I said but black people can't be wizards and space people and they can't fight evil, so they can't be in the story. When he didn't say anything back I turned around. He was in full recline mode in his chair and he was very still, looking at me. He didn't say anything else.For some of the debate that followed, see links at the foot of her article.
In Sundays NYRB, there's a letter by Markus Mester (of Cambridge, Mass) reacting to Judith Shulevitz's essay on "Evolutionism," which I have not read. Our correspondent assures us that scientists are silent on creationism because they are able to clearly differentiate between the matters on which science speaks and those of public policy. All well and good so far, but Mester continues:
Our scientific energy is misdirected if we fight harmless beliefs in angels or intelligent design. There are antiscientific illusions with far more serious repercussions for society. Among these are the continuing belief in ballistic missile defense; or an irrational fear of terrorism when alcohol, automobiles, or suicide pose much greater risks. On these fronts, you will find practicing scientists engaged.
More logrolling at the DoD, where everyone gets their prize toy, it seems. Fred Kaplan reports:
The administration's budgetary sleight of hand (not invented by Bush's people) involves a basic conceptual confusion—the tacit notion that more money means more defense. Nobody expresses this equation explicitly, yet few officials or politicians are willing to challenge it, either. (When legislators vote to cut a weapon system, for whatever reason, they know that their opponent in the next election will call them "soft on defense," if not "unpatriotic.") ...
The SSN-774 Virginia-class submarine ($2.6 billion). This is the cost of one nuclear-powered attack submarine. The Navy currently has 60 capable of patrolling the oceans. Does it—do we—really need another one? Rumsfeld's Quadrennial Defense Review, issued last week, declares that the Navy will soon start building two new submarines a year, a rate of production not seen since the Cold War, an era when our main foe, the Soviet Union, also had a huge submarine fleet ...
I'm not proposing that Congress should kill all these weapons systems—just that it should (as a starter) ask if funding all of them is necessary, especially at these extravagant levels, given the threats that are out there in the world, and the need to set priorities, given that we're broke.
The slender relationship between money and value goes the other way, too. Among the most spectacular weapons programs of recent years are the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (the pilotless reconnaissance drones, such as Predator and Global Hawk) and the JDAM smart bombs. The UAVs cost as little as $5 million; JDAMs go for a little more than $20,000 apiece. Bush and Rumsfeld are proposing to accelerate production in all cases, building 132 additional UAVs and over 10,000 more JDAMs, for two-thirds the cost of a single attack submarine.
Someone who looked just at the dollars might think that the one sub was more vital to security than all those drones and smart bombs. No one who looked at the specific programs (except maybe a Navy submarine captain) would believe that for a minute. The point is, it's time to take a more tangible approach to the entire defense budget, line by line—to assess military security not according to how much we spend but what we buy.
As Seth Stevenson points out, another Onion article from a couple of years ago, which I laughed myself silly about at the time, has come true.
Title: The Return
Author: Richard Maynard
Year Published: 1989
Rating: 1 Severed Head (of 5)
Summary: British astronauts return from a near light speed journey to find humans have reverted to hunter-gatherer culture. They try to fit in, spending the entire book fighting savages for their women and hunting grounds. The apocalypse is just an excuse for the author to spend 240 pages relishing the brutality of primitive life through his first-person narrator.
Setting: Our smelly little band travels from Bordeaux to Normandy via a rusty barge full of rotting pumpkins, then flees from a cannibal tribe through the Channel Tunnel. They spend some time in Kent, but the reversion of the locals to marauding sheep-theives drives them west to Windsor Castle. Eventually our narrator dies on a hilltop near Bromley, bitter and forsaken by the tribe he'd led.
Catastrophe: As best our astronauts can figure, a popular contraceptive cosmetic killed off all the adults in the world, leaving the children to fend for themselves. Some effort is spent trying to figure this out, but the evidence is contradictory and eventually the author loses interest in favor of another spear impalement.
Representative Sample:
"It's Terry!" I cried. "That must be John on the ground. Oh God!" And I ran from the room in a crazed and implacable fury. John began to scream, animal screams of pain beyond endurance that came to me high on the still morning air as I reached the roof. I cannot now recall actually descending the fire escape and running towards the sound of John's screams, but in my haste I had forgotten to bring my weapons. I had only my knife at my belt and the urge to kill overwhelming me as I ran.
They heard me coming and turned to fight. The leader already had John's head in his hands. I was oblivious of the others, he was the man I wanted. but there was one in my way. I lunged at him, my knife in hand and striking upwards. I had his beard entangled in my fingers and his guts spilling down over my other hand. Spears were driving at me. I forced onwards over the crumpling body of my first kill and straight for the leader's throat. There were noises from behind me. Reports. They meant nothing to me then. the leader was smiling strangely as his spear drove upwards for my stomach. There was a crash and an axe cleaved the spear in half. Barry stood between us. "He's mine!" I called, and Barry stepped aside. The tall man was still smiling as he came to meet me almost with an eagerness. He had no chance really, for he knew nothing of the techniques of unarmed combat. I grabbed him and tossed him flat onto the bloody surface of the street. It was absurdly easy. Then I knelt down and cut his throat with a satisfaction close to pleasure. In that instant I was as primitive as they were, intent only on revenge. In so short a time had I reverted to the basic nature of man. Then something struck my head and I fell forward into his still gushing blood.
Or rather my four half-cents.
There isn't much that hasn't been said already about the Jyllands-Posten cartoon row, but I have had a few thoughts on the matter that I haven't seen very often.
If you read the full text, a lot of "apologies" aren't. I'm not thrilled by the tone of the State Department's statement, but as Eugene Volokh points out, it's not quite what the press has made it out to be. Similarly, the Norwegian "apology" is anything but, if you actually read the thing and don't just skim the headlines.
I've seen a lot of comments on international news websites complaining that Christianity would never be treated with similar disrespect. Plainly, these people are unfamiliar with mass media in the West. I also wonder if Muslims calling for sanctions against speech disrespectful of religion know how Christians would view the Quranic account of the crucifixion.
Saturday's All Things Considered began with an interview with the editor of the Washington Post. Fred Hiatt draws a line between offensive images and gratuitously offensive images, explaining that the distinction applies when offensive content can be conveyed without being actually duplicated. He says that describing one of the cartoons can adequately explain its contents, and he's right. Where I disagree with him is his implication that gratuitously offensive content is never worth publishing.
If there is a debate about the right to publish offensive speech itself, it's entirely appropriate to publish that speech in the knowledge that it will give avoidable offense in order to test that right and contribute to the debate. However, the American press faces no pressure from mob action comparable to that Europeans worry about. For that reason, I don't think I could join a chorus accusing the U.S. press of capitulation for not printing the cartoons.
There's a real temptation to huddle around and yell "Fight! Fight! Fight!" when these culture clashes happen. You get all excited, and you want your side to win. However, if there's a side I certainly don't want to be on, it's that of the Danish imams who added three mind-blowingly offensive cartoons to the Jyllands-Posten twelve and toured the Middle East with them. Those guys seem to be egging the sides on enthusiastically, and I'd love to spoil their fun.
Those of you within BBC4's catchment area (and those of you who aren't, you should be logging in here) might be interested in the new Folk Britannia season. Haven't had a chance to watch any episodes yet but may write more on this when I do.
Last year, Thomas Friedman wrote an editorial (bootleg copies here and here) comparing U.S. policy on enemy combatants with George Washington's policy on prisoners of war as portrayed by David Hackett Fischer. A month beforehand, Callimachus at Done With Mirrors made a similar reflection. Both cited Fischer's argument that the Revolutionary forces held Americans to a higher standard of behavior than had been common, and lamented the loss of that expectation today.
In the American Enterprise Online interview with Fischer, he addresses a different parallel:
Some of our leaders were very careful to, as Sam Adams said, stay in the right and put your enemy in the wrong. They were careful about who fired the first shot. Not only at Lexington and Concord but also George Washington, Lincoln, and FDR in 1941. On the other side are figures in American history who adopted the doctrine of preemption, always with disastrous results. General Gage in 1774 decided he would make a preemptive strike against the armaments of New England. Jefferson Davis and Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens explicitly justified the attack on Fort Sumter as a preemptive strike. What they did was to unite their opponents and divide their supporters.
